BEHIND THE SCENES
Grand Entrance to the Estate
Reservations supervisor Argery Cooke ensures you’ve got the ticket
With the estate welcoming just over one million visitors a year, and with about half of that number consisting of groups, a seamless reservations system is critical. Enter Argery Cooke, Mount Vernon’s Reservations supervisor. Cooke and her team of three are the first point of contact for potential visitors who reach out to Mount Vernon, including school groups, tour operators, and individuals.
Whether a caller is a Girl Scout troop leader from Memphis or a tour operator from Milan, they speak with someone skilled at tailoring the Mount Vernon experience to their needs. Along with answering the inevitable questions about directions and opening times, Cooke and her team possess a deep knowledge of the estate and its visitor programs.
The Reservations staff’s top priority, according to Cooke, is to ensure an insightful and meaningful visit. Mount Vernon is much more than the Mansion; visitors to the 50 acres open to the public can encounter a working farm and extensive gardens, and learn about the lives of the enslaved population.
“We want visitors to not just see something, but to have it provide a deeper level of understanding about George Washington and his world. We are dedicated to creating an immersive story for visitors,” she adds.
Customer service is key. Recent examples range from working with a descendant of the Syphax family, which has brought multiple groups to the property to see how their enslaved ancestors lived and worked, to setting up a VIP tour for the Colombian ambassador.
Cooke, who has been at Mount Vernon since 2011, has an M.S. in applied behavioral science and speaks several languages. She had an earlier career in organizational development at the International Monetary Fund, but says that she always felt she should work at Mount Vernon. Perhaps it’s because she herself has a tangible personal connection to George Washington—she lives on property that was once one of Washington’s five farms.
As is true throughout the property, the work of Cooke and her staff has been radically altered in the face of Mount Vernon’s necessary response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “We had longtime relationships with teachers and tour operators, so the change affected us emotionally,” says Cooke. “We had to adapt quickly and work mostly from home, while being tightly organized. There was a lot of coordination.”
Just before its March closure, there were bookings for 345,211 visitors, mostly groups. Based on this number, Cooke estimates that some 7,000 school and tour operator buses would have visited Mount Vernon this year. Instead, the department rescheduled or returned more than 326,000 admissions.
Cooke says the pandemic has created a new benchmark for how staff throughout Mount Vernon collaborate and treat each other, professionally and personally. For example, working with the K12 Learning Department, Reservations was able to reach out to a few hundred schools about Mount Vernon’s virtual programs. As a result, from April to mid-June, 1,575 students participated in 67 programs.
In their phone conversations, Cooke often hears from people about their fond memories of prior visits to Mount Vernon and their eagerness to return. “A teacher from Tennessee, who brings a large group of students every spring, told me that he was motivated to make Mount Vernon his primary field trip every year because he visited as a young boy and wanted to continue to create learning experiences for himself and his students,” she says. And then there are those who want to spend birthdays and other special moments at Mount Vernon. “One gentleman told me that he proposed to his wife here and that they plan to celebrate their 50th anniversary here, too.”