Leisa Cook’s first year as Land Between the Lakes Area Supervisor was no easy task.
Hired in September 2021, a pair of disastrous December tornadoes rumbled through the Rivers just three months later.
An EF-4 entered Kentucky through Cayce and Mayfield eventually passed through Lyon County — clipping Hillman Ferry Campground, Demumbers Bay and Clay Bay on the way to Princeton, Dawson Springs and Bremen.
An EF-3, meanwhile, entered from Stewart County, Tennessee, into southern Calloway County, southern Christian County and eventually ended in Bowling Green — on its way impacting Gatlin Point and Brandon Spring.
Both of these twisters, Cook said, halted everything she was trying to accomplish early on in year one — including important partnerships, transition meetings and brainstorming sessions — and switched everything to a recovery mode.
Having been a federal employee for almost 20 years, and stationed with the U.S. Forestry Service for close to the last four, Cook had last served as deputy forest supervisor for the Malheur National Forest in Oregon before taking the job here in west Kentucky.
Cook said there were three reasons she and her husband relocated to this area:
1) They had long been looking for a multi-recreational and outdoors area east of the Mississippi, with which they could share together as “empty nesters.”
2) They were seeking something “very in-between” the big-city life and the small dust-towns of America, and “very friendly.”
And 3) She was wanting to work in “large recreation.”
Land Between the Lakes couldn’t fit the bill more perfectly if it tried.
An extra bonus, Cook said, was the type of facilities LBL already had to offer upon her arrival: the Golden Pond Planetarium, the Woodlands Nature Station, the Homeplace, the Elk & Bison Prairie among them.
Now heading into year two of the position, Cook noted it’s time to get back to the relationships and partnerships part of her job, following the tornado recovery and the exploring of LBL’s possibilities.
One of those developing relationships is a “shared vision” with the Daniel Boone National Forest, in which they’ll enter into agreement with state partners.
Cook was one of the first-ever graduates of the recently-established and accredited environmental health degree programs at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, who later went on to earn a masters’ degrees in business administration and public health.
LBL accounts for more than 170,000 acres of forest, wetlands and open lands, and it’s one of only two national recreation areas in the U.S. Forest Service’s Southern Region.
For more information, call 1 (800) 525-7077, or visit online at landbetweenthelakes.us.
