Marty Lamoureux, Board Member, Boone County Historical Society, April 08, 2026

On our program today, we are going to talk about the Boone County Historical Society and Marty LaMoure joins us on the phone. Marty, thanks for coming in today and helping. Hey, no problem.

I always look forward to visiting every month and sharing information with what's going on at Boone County Historical Society. Well, we had our board meeting last night, so... We got that done. We got that done. First Tuesday of every month.

Okay, and this was a little different because of April, April 1st coming up on a Wednesday, so it's like the latest in the month that you could actually have your meeting, your regular meeting. Right. Well, there we go.

So it's always on a Tuesday, so Tuesday evening, so here we go. We had all of our board members present at our meeting, and we went through correspondence and just overall general comments from our president.

We did our Treasures Report, which is our quarterly report, to cover and see how we're looking financially this quarter. We feel good about our finances through 2026 so far. So our first quarter, we're actually in the black with just our numbers here.

So we feel appreciate the donations that have been made and also, as usual, continue to be frugal with our spending. Luckily, we didn't have any large... That also helped.

We didn't have any large repairs or any large bills at this point in time in the year, and so things look good right now. But we are also always appreciative of donations in any form as we continue to be able to preserve the history in Boone County.

And we do want, again, just so the listeners understand, you guys go on a calendar year, don't you, for your budget and stuff? Yeah.

So others keep talking about, you know, they've got the end of the fiscal years, the end of June, and it starts in July, the new fiscal year, for the city, for the public entities. But for the Historical Society, it's a calendar year that you work on. It is.

Thank you for mentioning that. And that's the same thing we do with, you know, all of our membership, too, is on a calendar year and is renewed on an... They expire on December 31st. So same thing with the membership. So those that didn't get it done, you still have time.

We will take your membership any time of the year, so we're glad to do that. We figure that sometimes people get busy, sometimes the paperwork maybe that we sent if you're a renewal, it maybe got put aside, so we're happy to do that.

Not only can you do it physically, coming to the History Center, and we're there on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 10 to 2, and we can also make special appointment times if need be. And we would be glad to have your membership.

Well, since you had your meeting, why don't you give us a rundown of what happened there? I will do that. Okay. I've started off with that Treasurer's Report. Under old business, we continue to look into grants and do grant writing as best we can.

We have one person that helps us with that, but if anybody has expertise in grant writing, we would love to have you come help us.

I know that is not a strong suit of mine or something that I've ever had to do in my work career or anything, but that's one of our general sources of income.

We did apply for one grant and didn't get accepted for that, but we'll continue, and we have several sources that we can utilize, so hopefully we'll be having some income from that. We are looking into options for insurance overall.

Insurance for museums is kind of a special niche, and it's one of our biggest expenses.

So we are visiting with other museums, seeing what they utilize for insurance, what their annual costs are, that type of thing, and considering just, you know, we'd love to stay local if we can, but we also have to look at our finances, so. We discussed under old business.

We do an annual meeting in January, and we give reports on each one of the functioning areas of the History Center, give full reports, and have that meeting.

That's attended just by a very few people, but we don't approve the, when we have a meeting, we don't approve the meeting until the next meeting. So in our bylaws currently, it states that that set of minutes won't be approved until the next annual meeting.

And to me, all the information is outdated and kind of not worthless. It's historical, but we had that discussion.

So I think what we are going to start doing is we will be sending out the contents of the annual meeting so that what's summarized for 2025 will go out to that membership, and they will get that into more current time.

They will get it after the meeting in January, but we will make a disclaimer that the meeting minutes have not been approved by the membership, just so they know that. And that will happen then at the meeting in January of 2027, actually, for our next year.

Sounds like a minor detail, but it's just something I kind of came across because I had a couple people who said, well, I haven't seen that or I didn't know about that.

And it's like, okay, if it's something that came in the annual meeting minutes, they're not going to know about it for a whole other year. Yeah.

And the other thing with the unfortunate situation of the newspapers no longer being opened in with an Ogden reporter in Madrid, we'll have to change our process for how we communicate.

We're required in our bylaws to communicate about our annual meeting through I think it's three business sources. So since we don't have the local newspapers, we'll only have the Ames Trib to use.

We'll use I think we put a notice at the library, and then also we'll do probably the digital sign downtown and our digital sign in front of the History Center.

Don't worry, minor minutia details that probably most people don't care about, but it's things we have to deal with to make sure we're following the rules of everything. Don't worry, you're not the only group that's struggling to do that right now. Let's see. Shops on story.

We're looking into becoming a member of that group. Sue Krueckenberg, our president, and Harry Bonk, our buildings and grounds and our vice president will attend their meeting on Monday and do a presentation and then they'll decide about accepting us as part of their group.

So we figure we're on story. We do have a little gift shop, but we just want to be active with the community. So we will do that on Monday, the 13th. I think that was it on old business. New business.

I know everybody's working hard with that and organizing and getting things put together for the 21st. At this point in time, I guess we're understanding Jeannie Whitekey, one of our members, attends the Boone Main Street.

She's on that committee and attends those meetings and gives us information from it. So our understanding from the meeting is that it's going to be South Story that's going to be blocked off. Is that correct? Yes. It'll be shown by the association. Right. Right.

So we're figuring it's not going to be everybody downtown, but we still are planning on at that point being open that day. And I think there's a we would love to be big contributors. But as you know, we're a nonprofit.

So we have to kind of say, well, we would like to get on the map because I know there's an app that all the right people use to find out where there's locations of things to do. So we're working toward at least getting on the map. And that's being recommended for just everybody.

Get on the map so they can see where you're at. Right. Good. Yep. So that'll be a busy week because I think also isn't after that. Crazy days is on the 25th. Is that correct? Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. I think that's when it's going to be. Yeah.

We had that down also as we'll be obviously open on that Saturday. And we'll decide if we open up. And in years past, I think we've done an outside table items for sale when we were cleaning out the second floor. I remember doing that.

But we'll see what we decide to do for crazy days. All right. Other items on new business. We have been looking at our status of technology and seeing what we need, which was computers.

That was actually one of the things that we asked for to be covered in the grant that we didn't get. So we are going to go ahead and make the decision to spend to get two computers. We have to have upgraded equipment to be able to function and do the things that we need to do.

So we approved doing that. We will buy almost likely a used or refurbished computer, but it'll still be new compared to what we have currently. So again, we're pretty frugal about going about that. So that was really all that was on new business. Oh, no.

Another thing on new business. We are having volunteer appreciation month in April. And so we do appreciate our volunteers that we have. So we're going to be doing a little event for them on Saturday the 18th from 8 30 to 10.

The board members will be there to meet and visit with them. And if any of the volunteers are listening, it's a surprise to you because you haven't gotten your invitation yet.

Because we just decided it last night, but we're just going to do some coffee rolls juice and get a chance. Because often, depending on people's schedules, the volunteers we have never get to meet the board members. And they don't always know what who's responsible for what.

And so this way we get to kind of a little bit socially get to know each other. So we'll look forward to doing that. Saturday with a scholar that will be on June 6th. And it's at 10 a.m. start. This is the one in the Jordan tornado.

And we will be doing just coffee and cookies for that one. And we will be waving admissions on that Saturday also to the center because we appreciate the people who have done time and effort to be able to put this together.

So if you attend the Saturday with a scholar and haven't toured the center, you'll be able to do that at no cost. But we will also appreciate donations at that time if you consider doing that. 50th anniversary, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Janie's been working with the individuals from the community. They're going to be doing presentation about this, putting together the slideshow and the information.

And as we said before, when we talked about this, I think everybody who remembers that day has their story about where were you when and go through that. Were you in town when that happened? No, I was not. No, I was not. You were not. Okay.

I had others in other places, but not that one. But I know you got Carl. Carl, I've already visited with him a little bit. And he's digging out a lot of the stuff that he's got available on it. Right. Right. Exactly. Which is very good.

And then I know the Glenn family, the Flynn family, they have also information and also the Lincoln family. And I hope I didn't forget anybody, but I know those are the three for sure that have information for us. Good. So that'll be on June 6th. June 6th, yeah.

So mark that on your calendar. I was contacted last week by an individual who's living in Des Moines. And he's moving. And he has kind of an interesting item. It's the bank, small bank vault.

It's like the drawer gate that's metal that was actually in the original First National Bank, which was Citizens. It's now Citizens, which is now was Citizens. I still call it Citizens, which is U.S. Bank now. And they wanted to know if we wanted that.

So we looked at pictures of it last night, and we are going to go to Des Moines to pick that up from those individuals. So it would be an interesting artifact to have. So those are kind of the fun items that you come across that are kind of unusual. Sure.

That work continues on locating and documenting artifacts up on the third floor. Also, up on the third floor, we're building some shelving. Harry's been taking care of that up there to kind of make it more organized and easier to access items.

He's been working on all the boxes of pictures and categorizing and organizing. It's just always just kind of an adventure up there. There's about three or four people that that's their job to be sleuthed up on the third floor.

And one particular does often slides that are found that we can find a lot of pictures with, too. Good. Continue, as usual, to enter into past perfect. So things are documented for content and location.

And that's just an ongoing project for the collections committee, which just does a great job. Exhibit report. I told you already about the Jordan tornado. And the next trail tales will be on the Jordan tornado also.

And the other item where they're working on is the 1976 CIC champion football team. And most of the team and the cheerleaders and managers and coaches have been reached and have a spreadsheet with their information, contact follow-up information.

The planning team members are Jeanie, Mike Elsberry, Pat Carpenter, Scott Stowell, Sue Cassati Finstead, and Bob Sloan. And then we have the possibility days that, again, they are having their 50th anniversary. We will be doing a display for that.

It will most likely be on our second floor landing. So we're working on items for that. And the post-park. I know they're having a 100th anniversary. I don't know. Is anything, have you heard anything official from the city if there's plans for doing anything with that or not?

Or from the park commission. I know the park commission, they've been spending so much time on their putting together this 10-year plan thing. I knew that they were. And I had talked with a member, too, and I think they maybe just, yeah. I think there's still time on that.

We just always are kind of putting it out on the calendar ahead of time. So I know they're busy with lots of other things. I already talked about RAGBRI, and that was part of with that. On our publication side, we have sent the updated brochure.

Well, we did final approval on it last night, and we will put it to print now for our brochure so we can get that distributed out to businesses with our updated information. I told you already about the trail tales.

Trail tales for fall, we'll combine the 50th anniversaries and also include our 60th anniversary. So that we already have in mind what our content will be. The other thing that we have now is a little passport to history. We've created a half-page passport. It's printed purposes.

We hand them out to the kids when they come for tour. And then they can stamp their passport and get a free bookmark when they're done. We actually have a small, not a real big one, but a smaller school tour this year.

Again, they came last year, and they're coming again this year, and they'll be visiting that museum on Thursday. So it's always fun to have the kids come visit. Let's see.

We're still looking at our quote from Molar Concrete and Sticker Concrete by our back entry door by the community building on the south side. We have some leveling that needs to be done. And front door locks, we're changing those up, which is nice.

Oh, we're doing some reshelving, told you about that. And let's see. I think that's about it. Just a lot of work getting ready for the new season, right? Yeah, right. And there's always something to do. It's just like your house.

As far as rentals, we still continue to average about four rentals a month, and things are going well with that. The shop, we have a new volunteer who's orienting to the shop, so that'll be another person to help out there with being the tour guide and helping out there.

Membership, again, I think I mentioned it earlier, we continue to get renewals, and that's fine.

And Sue and I are put together, actually, we put together the letter back in January where things do push with the local businesses to encourage membership there with a letter as well as a visit. Kate Shelley, no update out there from previous.

That's about summary of the meeting. We've been contacted, I guess, by the charge of the activity.

The library has contacted us about participating, and they're doing events in a DASFET to participate with them for like a downtown building tour and presentation of information and information on Kate Shelley.

I think they're planning on doing that sometime in the end of May and then in September. We still need to get in touch with the library for that. On the buildings and ground side of things I wanted to ask you, you're landscaping and stuff like that still?

Yes, I've got that DASFET, that's the last thing, thank you. Landscaping, getting to where we can do our spring planting. Ryan Hanson and I will be shopping and planting so we can add some more color and decor outside so we're looking forward to that.

All right, getting that all busy time. Yes. We get new springtime, got a lot of things to do. Again, if people are interested, again, memberships, easy to do, do them online. Go to the website, very easy to do that way. Come in when you're open on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday.

Right, and you can also, if you're already a member and you're wanting to do a donation, you can do just a donation online also. A lot of different ways to help out. Once again, you're going to be busy down there too. Folks, don't forget to stop by if you don't have a membership.

Get that. Otherwise, if you've got a membership, you can get in. Easy.

And with the $5 admission, if you aren't a member, but that is one of the benefits of being a member is you can come as many times as you want to with your current, and if you get a family membership with the people that currently live in your household, and you can get a decrease fund of rentals if you're going to use our community room downstairs.

And I was going to say with that, again, people, if they want, make contact. I guess you're the one to make contact with, right? Right, and you can certainly get ahold of me directly if you have questions about membership or rental, so either one. Okay.

My number is 515-291-8108, and I'm glad to answer any questions you have. All righty. Marty, appreciate you taking time getting us up to date on what's going on or what's been going on as we get ready here for spring and all the activities.

And again, got plenty of them happening here, so we look forward to it. There you go. It's going to be a busy summer. It will. I look forward to visiting with you again next month. That sounds good. Thank you so much.