Jackie Rocha’s longest job was a 14-year stint at the history center of The Statue of Liberty — Ellis Island Foundation.

The foundation is the nonprofit organization that raises money and operates programs in support of Ellis Island, the port of entry for countless immigrants to the United States that’s now a national monument.

While working there, she heard daily the stories of visitors who came in search of their family origins.

“It was part of their bucket list to share their immigration stories with someone,” Rocha said.

Storytelling is going to be essential to Rocha’s new job, as the first executive director of the Saint-Gaudens Memorial, which acts in the same capacity as the Ellis Island Foundation. In this case, it will be Rocha who will be telling the story of sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, of the national park in Cornish that bears his name and of the programs the Saint-Gaudens Memorial underwrites at the park.

At the direction of the artist’s wife, Augusta, the memorial was set up as a nonprofit in 1919 to safeguard Saint-Gaudens’ home in Cornish and to protect and promote his work. Saint-Gaudens, who died in 1907 at the age of 59, is a foundational American artist, representative of a time when America was coming into its own as a global power.

The memorial donated the Cornish property to the federal government in 1964, and the following year it became the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site. It was redesignated as a national park in 2019.

The memorial’s primary function is to underwrite programs at the park, which is open from May to October. It funds a concert series, exhibitions of contemporary art and a yearly artist fellowship. It also pays for some art conservation and occasional acquisitions of art to display at the park, Thayer Tolles, chairwoman of the memorial’s board, said in a phone interview.

The board decided now was the right time to hire an executive director who could both raise the profile of the park and of the programs the memorial sponsors and raise money.

“There’s a lot we can do in terms of just local fundraising and public awareness of the  park,” said Tolles, who’s been on the memorial’s board since 2003 and is a longtime curator of American art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Rocha, who started work this month, comes to the job with two unusual qualifications. Part of her upbringing took place in Sunapee, where she and several members of her family live now; she’s a 1999 graduate of Kearsarge Regional High School. And she spent years working for a “friend” organization of a national park.

“We’re really excited about hiring her, and one of the things that’s particularly wonderful about her is that she has long experience with the National Park Service,” Tolles said.

“I kind of speak that park language,” Rocha said in an interview.

She grew up partly in New York, where her parents met and lived before relocating to Sunapee. Rocha moved back recently to help look after her father.

For many years, the Saint-Gaudens Memorial has had an administrative director, Lisa Niven, based in Westchester County, New York. Though some of the organization’s board members have Upper Valley roots, Rocha will be its first local leader.

There is room, she said, to expand awareness in the Upper Valley of Saint-Gaudens and the park and its programs.

It should be an easy job, given the extraordinary art on display. It’s not an exaggeration to say that New Hampshire’s only national park is someplace Upper Valley residents should visit once a summer, if only to spend some time looking at the memorial to Col. Robert Gould Shaw, who was killed while leading a regiment of African American soldiers in the Civil War. People can go on about the Orozco murals at Dartmouth, but the Shaw memorial is the greatest work of art on permanent display in the Twin States.

The Saint-Gaudens Memorial remains a relatively small nonprofit, with an annual budget of $250,000 (though that’s expected to increase this year), and an endowment of around $3 million.

Greater awareness of the park and the memorial’s work would lay the foundation for stronger fundraising.

“I think we will get more local funding when we can communicate the need,” Rocha said.

For more information abou the Saint-Gaudens Memorial, go to saint-gaudens.org.

A rural story

Norwich artist and filmmaker Viktor Witkowski will screen “In My Words,” a film he directed that mixes experimentation and documentation, at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 5, in Dartmouth’s Loew Auditorium.

Witkowski’s grandmother and aunt (his grandmother’s oldest daughter) still live in the director’s native Poland. He interviewed his grandmother about her experiences during the Holocaust and both women about how Poland has changed over the decades.

Most important, though, is the story’s pastoral setting, something I think residents of rural places don’t talk about enough. When you live in the country, history often seems to happen elsewhere until, suddenly, it’s at your doorstep. When the history is written, the countryside is often forgotten, except by the people who live there. Admission to the film is free.

Word to your Grammy

It’s been brought to my attention that Lake Street Dive’s drummer, Mike Calabrese, lives in Woodstock. The band was nominated for a Grammy Award for “best traditional pop vocal album” for “Good Together,” released last June. The band is currently on tour and won’t be at Sunday’s awards ceremony, but that doesn’t mean we can’t watch. Whatever the outcome, congratulations are in order.

Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.