After 16 years of service to the community of Sedona, Park Ranger program manager and founder Bob Huggins and his wife Judy are hanging up their volunteer ranger hats.

The Sedona Volunteer Park Rangers will now be led by volunteer Greg Stein, and as of Monday, April 10, the program will be administered by the city’s Parks and Recreation Department.

The changes have been made in response to the couple’s health issues; however, Bob Huggins has said he will be spending more time on the city’s Historic Preservation Commission at a recent meeting.

“For many years Bob and Judy Huggins have given their time, talent, and own financial contribution, to create and sustain the volunteer Park Ranger Program,” Sedona City Manager Karen Osburn said. “Rangers support Parks and Rec events, assist visitors in Uptown and serve as local ambassadors and complete resource improvement projects at Parks facilities. The city could never repay Bob and Judy for their selfless contributions to our community, but we will always remember and be grateful for them.”

From Little Acorns

Bob Huggins set out to be an actor and got picked up to do a few small movies during his teen years, among them the popular “Beach Blanket” film series in the 1960s. He also spent time as a self described “spare Mouseketeer.”

Huggins later joined the American Repertory Theater and traveled the country for two years, performing in 21 different plays. After his time on stage, Huggins earned a law degree and worked as a writer and publicist at 20th Century Fox. After working on “Hey, Ranger!,” a pilot about a ranger who lived in a fire tower protecting the Sierra National Forest and his adventures fighting fires, saving damsels in distress and fighting grizzly bears, he developed an interest in becoming a park ranger.

However, one of those elements turned out not to apply to his own marriage, considering how Judy’s football ability stood out when the couple first met. At the time, he was still at 20th Century Fox and she was working for a surgeon in Santa Monica.

“We met through our friend R.K.,” Bob said. “R.K., Judy, his roommate and I went over to the Safeway parking lot to throw a football around. And Judy threw that football [with a fantastic spiral] and I was astonished at this girl throwing a football like that. The next weekend, we went to Disneyland and we just fell in love with each other. We’ve been married now for 56 years, it’s been a long time, but it’s been fun.”

The couple moved to Santa Monica, and one day, while walking on the beach, Bob half-jokingly popped the second big question: “What if we just chucked all this and became forest rangers?” He expected her to laugh it off. Without hesitation, Judy said yes.

“We first came to Sedona in 1970,” Bob said. “We were both stationed at Grand Canyon National Park and we came here to get away and we fell in love with it. Then we spent 31 years with the National Park Service and when it came time to retire, we were trying to figure out where to live. We lived in Grand Teton, Yellowstone and other really beautiful places, but we loved Sedona and so we started looking around four years before we retired.”

Bob closed out his career in the NPS as the Servicewide Education Coordinator in Washington, D.C., and while he never saw himself retiring, that changed along with the nation on Sept. 11, 2001.

“I had an office on the top floor of the Interior Building,” he said. “I saw the plane hit the Pentagon. I was watching CNN about the Twin Towers and it just tore me up … Now, just coming in on the metro train, never knowing if it was going to blow up or not. Then the next day going into Washington, D.C., seeing the army and the Hummers and people stopping and asking me for identification even though I was in uniform, I never got over it.”

Huggins retired afterwards in 2001 and the couple soon moved into their new residence in Sedona, which they chose for its views of the red rocks and its kitchen.

“I love to cook,” Bob said. ”I’m writing a cookbook and that’s one of the things I’ll be able to hopefully finish. I’m calling it ‘What Every Man Should Know About Quiche.’ It’s a history of men cooking, and how that converted over to women. It has recipes from various eras broken up by geographical areas.”

Great Oaks Grow

The couple started the volunteer ranger program after noticing the similarities between how visitors congregate in the village area of Grand Canyon and in Uptown in Sedona, and how people expressed the same need to find information on what was available in the area. Bob said he knew the program would work when someone came up to him on the street and said “Hey, Ranger! I got a question.”

The program originally started with three rangers including Judy, who joined out of loyalty, thinking it would just be until they got a few others to volunteer.

“I’m basically shy,” Judy said. “It was a challenge when Bob first started the program. I said: ‘I’ll do it until you get a couple more people on,’ but that didn’t work and here we are 16 years later. What I liked about it was meeting people from around the world and just chatting with them.”

The history of public land stewardship has been one of Bob’s biggest passions, and he intends to continue that legacy by continuing to serve on Sedona’s Historic Preservation Commission. One of the commission’s biggest projects is the long-term preservation of the Sedona Ranger Station at 250 Brewer Road as a city park.

“The whole history of public land management is something that I’ve always had tremendous interest in,” Bob said. “At the National Park Academy, I taught the history of public land management, so it’s always been special to me … Then when the city finally acquired the Sedona Ranger Station. And it’s one of my pet projects that I want to see the barn there developed into a museum of public lands.”

The couple haven’t decided if they will remain in Sedona. Their absence from the rangers’ ranks will be all the more noticeable as around half of the volunteer rangers chose not to return after the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year’s recruitment drive only brought in one new volunteer. Bob said the program is getting by with seven participants, which is less than half the number he would consider ideal.

However, these dedicated staff have still contributed 1,125 hours to their community over the last year, bringing the program’s total number of volunteer hours since its inception to 38,539. These hours represent a monetary value of $626,039 to the community against a cost to the city of $45,000, according to the program’s annual report.

With the couple’s retirement, control of the Sedona Volunteer Rangers has been handed over to city staff. Recreation coordinator Aaron Day has said that Sedona will be reviewing the program’s processes to determine if changes will be made, but did not state if any changes have been proposed so far.

“This is more of a passing of the baton from Judy and Bob to the Parks and Recreation Department,” Day said. “We look forward to keeping this program going because they provide such a benefit to this community.”

“I would be lying if I said I won’t miss putting on the brown and green uniform and distinctive western hat to go out ‘rangering,’” Bob wrote in the program’s annual report. “But it is time for a change, and I know that this change will result in a stronger program and increased benefits for the city.”

Residents interested in volunteering for the program can do so online at www.sedonaaz.gov/parks.