The Accomplishments of Maurice Maze

Maurice installing an efficient fluorescent fixture



Maurice Maze is in his eleventh season of work at Everglades National Park. His contributions have benefitted employees and visitors in each district of the park by making improvements to communications systems, building lighting and general repair of electrical systems. Some of his major accomplishments over the years include;



•        Repaired or replaced building lighting, emergency lights and installed new LED exit lights in the Coe visitor center, HQ, Bill Robertson and Dan Beard Centers and many other park buildings.

•        Worked on the installation of energy efficient fluorescent fixtures in park buildings.

•        Installed cellular amplifiers in Pine Island and Flamingo vehicles for better cell phone coverage in law enforcement vehicles.

•        Troubleshot and repaired the LED traffic signal lights at the main entrance station.

•        Maurice is always looking for better ways to accomplish the task and I use this next accomplishment as an example of his ingenuity.

Maurice solved a major communication problem for law enforcement staff. The rangers could not communicate back to dispatch from the portable radios at various locations in the park. The ranger could talk to dispatch with the mobile 50 watt Motorola radio installed in the vehicle, the problem was once he left the vehicle he could not talk back to dispatch with his portable 5 watt radio.



Maurice working on a light fixture at the Entrance Station



We requested Motorola to provide a solution which they responded with a proposal to add a digital vehicular repeater system at a cost of $1 0,000.00 each. Four vehicles would cost $40,000.00.

Maurice took it upon himself to research the Motorola manuals to engineer a system that would solve the problem at a much lower price. What he built was a system that used a second Motorola mobile radio as a receiver and connected this radio to the main Motorola mobile vehicle radio.

Now when the Ranger does a vehicle stop he calls dispatch while in the vehicle. Once they leave the vehicle he switches his portable radio to channel two which communicates to the second radio and retransmits the signal to dispatch. This solution has saved tens of thousands of dollars.