A license to remember

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, July 9th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: testing the limits of battlefield knowledge.

The battle of Gettysburg took place from July 1-3rd in 1863, and is widely considered the turning point of the Civil War. 

Today, every detail of it lives on in the history books and in the stories of more than 100 battlefield tour guides.

REICHARD: But becoming a guide takes months of studying, written exams, and oral quizzing. Most who walk into the exam room will leave disappointed: The test has a nearly 90% failure rate.

WORLD’s Emma Eicher talked to one man who beat the odds.

EMMA EICHER: Two years ago, 66 year-old Jeff Becker decided to take the toughest test in American history.

JEFF BECKER: It's just as easy to get accepted into Harvard and pass through and graduate from Harvard in four years than it is to become a guide at Gettysburg.

Becker has been a Civil War buff since he was a kid playing with toy soldiers. In his mid-50s, he started watching history shows and became fascinated by one specific battle: Gettysburg.

BECKER: I got the bug again. So I started reading books and then I said, well, you know what, I'd love to go out to the battlefield.

Becker lives in Pittsburgh, about a three-and-a-half hour drive from Gettysburg.

He couldn’t get enough. He wanted to know every tiny detail.

BECKER: So I started making trips. I don't know, what, five times a year or so, and I'd hire Gettysburg guides. And after a while of doing that, I said, "Wow, I think I think I want to do this.”

“This” being taking the test to become a tour guide. 

The battlefield is 7 times the size of Central Park. Exam-takers have to know military tactics, unit movements, and how the battle affected the trajectory of the war. One Gettysburg website says wannabe tour guides should study anything and everything to prepare.

So that’s what Becker did.

BECKER: And I would just plop up my chair, sit there, and read about all the action that occurred in like the wheat field or the peach orchard or different locations.

He traveled there constantly.

BECKER: And then I would start walking around and reading all the monuments. There's a lot of monuments at Gettysburg, probably 13 to 1400 monuments, and you're supposed to know all of them.

Then, exam day.

BECKER: So then they gave the test on December 7, a date that will live in infamy— that's the same day as Pearl Harbor.

The test has four tiers: The first is a written exam and an essay section.

BECKER: You have three hours of fill in the blank written exam. There's no true/false, there's no multiple choice. It's all you either know it, or you don't know it.

Becker joined 170 people to take the test that day. Only 20 passed on to the second tier: a panel interview with three licensed tour guides.

BECKER: It's like a job interview where they, you know, ask you questions, they give you time to respond and answer it, and usually those last from 30 to 45 minutes or so. 

Tier three is a weekend of hands-on training on the battlefield.

BECKER: They teach you a lot of dos and don'ts about guiding. And they're trying to help you pass the next phase, which is Tier Four, what they call the oral exam.

The oral exam is the only test where you get two chances to pass. The first time, Becker failed. He says one of his errors was turning his back to the testers to point out troop movements on the battlefield. 

Another: he went 5 minutes over the 2 hour time limit.

BECKER: They give you a critique on things that, you know, you need to work on to improve, and I focused primarily on fixing every item in that critique. And then I practiced...trying to perfect my two hour tour.

The second time, he sat alone as the interviewers went to another room to discuss the results of his test.

BECKER: I sat for like 45 minutes. And the longer I sat, the more I felt that I wasn't going to make it. But then they finally called me up, and for about the first 10 minutes it was basically what I need to work on to improve. And then after about 10 minutes, the supervisor said, "We're not going to let you on the hook. You made it.” Wow!

Becker says of the 20 who made it past the first stage, 11 became licensed tour guides, including him. Now, Becker splits his time between Pittsburgh and Gettysburg.

From April to October, he conducts tours for 10 days at a time, then goes back home for a quick break. His tours range from 2 hours to all day.

You’d think that might get monotonous, but Becker says it never gets old.

BECKER: To be able to tell the story of this battle is an honor. It's exciting. I love it. I love doing it. Every day, do two or three tours, meet all kinds of different people, from the very old to the very young.

Becker says guiding is a nice retirement gig. And he plans to keep doing these tours for as long as he can. For him, taking the toughest test in American history was worth a job he loves.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Eicher in Pittsburgh.

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