Old Clothes: But All I Wanted to Do Was Wear Old Clothes and Go Back to the Past
Richard Pawling has over thirty-five years of experience interpreting the natural and cultural heritage of the United States. Beginning his interpretive career as an environmental educator and later historian-naturalist at local and state parks, his evolution into living history began while employed as a National Park Service ranger at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site. To help visitors there understand that this now pristine site was actually a dirty, smoky iron furnace in the 1830s, he chose to portray the charcoal dust-covered, tobacco-chewing filler of the furnace in first person. He was honored with the Freeman Tilden Award for the Mid-Atlantic Region of the NPS for his efforts in designing and presenting this program about the "forgotten heroes" of the past - the common laborers.  In 1991, he launched his own entrepreneurial venture History Alive! to provide living history and heritage music programs as well as interpretive training workshops to venues throughout the United States and Canada. At that time, he also returned to adjunct college teaching with a focus on cultural geography - routinely bringing culture to life in the academic classroom with living history representations of old-time baseball players, coal miners and loggers for over twenty years. His unique teaching style twice won him the Outstanding Adjunct Professor of the Year award. Most recently, he was a full-time instructor of natural and cultural interpretation--inspiring the next generation of interpreters. The keystone of his educational/interpretive philosophy is that "History is People! History only comes alive when you realize it is people that make history and not some dry facts in a textbook. By looking at the past, we can learn who we are in the present and where we are going in the future."