INDEPENDENCE — Long-time Manzanar National Historic Site Chief of Interpretation Alisa Lynch is retiring on Sept. 30.
She began her National Park Service career as a seasonal park ranger in Yosemite National Park (1989) and as a lead ranger at Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts in Virginia (1990).
Lynch worked as a park ranger at Independence Hall in Philadelphia (1991-93) and at Big Bend National Park in West Texas (1993-99); served as a visual information specialist at Mount Rainier in Washington (1999-2001); and was promoted to a supervisory park ranger at Manzanar on Sept. 9, 2001. She has been there ever since.
Lynch has led the site’s efforts in planning and designing programs, projects, publications, exhibits and AV programs, outreach and engagement, visitor services, researching and preserving history, developing curriculum, and writing grants. Her passion is oral history and to date, Manzanar has preserved 720 interviews with former incarcerees, camp staff, tribal and local residents, and others.
She worked on projects for numerous other sites, including Tule Lake, Minidoka, the USS Arizona Memorial, Topaz Museum, and the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial in Washington. She helped to develop the Japanese American Confinement Sites (JACS) grant program, was a core member of the National Park Service’s Innovative Leadership Network, and graduated from the prestigious National Park Service GOAL Academy in 2023.
Lynch, her husband Alan Broch, their cats, and dog will continue to live in Independence, where Alan works for the U.S. Postal Service. She is volunteering for multiple interpretation and history projects and is a board member for the Owens Valley Unified School District.
If you’d like to connect, call (760) 878-8334, email alisalynch@yahoo.com, visit her on Facebook (Alisa Lynch Broch), or write to her at 166 Rosedale Dr., Independence, CA 93526.