Controversial firing of park volunteer Marie Ziegel fuels a
staff exodus
Gilroy – Bonfante Gardens is hemorrhaging tour guides and ride operators following the controversial firing of Marie Ziegel, a docent regarded by many as the queen bee of the park’s volunteer corps.
Resignations from the nonprofit theme park in west Gilroy began piling up shortly after the late-June firing of Ziegel and Richard Soria, a paid employee who also helped coordinate a roster of about 70 unpaid workers. The exodus of docents, many of them retirees, comes as park officials look to expand their stable of volunteers to support a renewed focus on educational programs.
“I would say that immediately upon hearing news that they fired Richard and let Marie go, there might have been six to eight docents who quit right then,” former volunteer Roger Anderson said. “Since then, I suppose there have been four or five docents who quit.”
Anderson, who resigned in June after finishing his last month of scheduled shifts, said that many of the most dedicated docents still on the volunteer roster are also planning to skip out on shifts. Anderson said he could understand the decision to eliminate Soria’s paid position in light of the nonprofit park’s recent financial troubles. The perennially cash-strapped park emerged from its darkest hour last summer when it restructured its debt load from $70 million to $13 million. But he said the board of directors and Paramount Great America, the private company that manages Bonfante’s day-to-day operations, have offered no reasonable justification for dismissing a volunteer who worked 30 to 40 hours each week for free.
“Marie Ziegel was the heart and soul of the docent program,” Anderson said. “She just really represented us and what we wanted to try and be. She’s gone and that really hurts, and the reasons given were ludicrous.”
Bob Kraemer, president of the park’s board of directors, called the termination of Soria and Ziegel personnel matters and declined to comment on the circumstances of the decision. He expressed doubt that a significant number of people have quit over the matter.
“We really have no indicator that we have a substantial difference of docents this year from last year,” he said. “We have some additions, we have some fallout, and some of those are no doubt volunteers who worked with those two people and are loyal to them.
“(Marie Ziegel) spent a lot of years working with us in the docent program, as did Richard, and we are very appreciative of all the time she put in,” Kraemer added. “Hopefully she was appreciated when she was here. We just really wanted to move on into the future.”
Ziegel refused to delve into the circumstances of her termination, offering only a brief statement.
“I worked at the park five and a half years and enjoyed it,” she said. “I hoped to help Michael and Claudia (Bonfante) with their dream for the park.”
In recent years, Ziegel spent much of her time helping Soria coordinate volunteer schedules and develop educational programs for the park, Soria said. Together, they masterminded the Monarch Greenhouse, one of the park’s most unique attractions.
Ziegel could often be found cleaning butterfly excrement in the greenhouse or wading up to her knees in ponds to scrub algae from rocks.
According to an account he heard from Ziegel, Soria said that park officials justified her termination because “we were too strong of a team” and could not work separately. Soria, who continues to work for Michael Bonfante’s landscaping company, said he was fired for writing “aggressive” e-mails to park officials over routine management affairs.
“They shot themselves in the foot” by firing Ziegel, Soria said. “Gilroy’s a small community and you can only draw so many people to volunteer.”
Life-long Gilroy resident Al Gagliardi, 82, took the season off from volunteering at Bonfante Gardens so he could focus on moving to a new home. He plans to resume work as a docent next year, though he said life has changed at the park since founder Michael Bonfante ceded control to the board of directors and Paramount.
“With Michael,” Gagliardi said, “it was more of a family.”
The new management ended small perks like the occasional free pass for a relative or friend, Gagliardi said, along with a program that rewarded volunteers with tokens redeemable for snacks and souvenirs. The decision to limit the role of docents in tending to the park’s manicured gardens further soured the experience for volunteers, many of whom enjoyed early morning garden work, according to Gagliardi.
For some, the unexplained firing of Ziegel was the last straw.
“After Marie was let go there was a kind of feeling of general unrest among the docents,” said Terrence Hansen, who resigned in June. “As a personal decision, I chose not to continue to volunteer there. The atmosphere was not one I wanted to work in. I just didn’t have fun anymore.”
