In a heartfelt 1997 interview with Doug Hicks, HPTC Deputy Superintendent, Jim passionately explained the core philosophy of the Williamsport Preservation Training Center:

“In order for someone to work independently in the federal sector and not screw up a resource they had to have a tremendous array of skills. You had to have craft skills, administrative skills, people skills, and you had to have academic skills - it was the marriage of these things that I had in mind. It was why I selected a cross section of people as trainees knowing that I would not have the fiscal resources to hire instructors. The participants would help expose the other participants to their strong suits. I mixed craftspeople with professional people with people who had administrative skills and people skills.”

Looking back on his career with the Park Service, Jim’s voice grew more determined as he reflected,

“My greatest contribution was to show that what we were doing was destroying cultural resources under the guise of maintaining them. We made people understand that they needed to do business a different way. If I contributed anything to the NPS, it was that idea. That idea may not have been original to me, but through my visibility and the amount of noise and people I beat over the head, I raised the awareness level of the special needs of cultural resources.”

You can read this full interview in the Cultural Resource Management Journal, Vol. 20, No. 12, 1997, as well as an 1977 interview with Jim Askins in the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Preservation News.

Jim passed away on September 7, 2011.