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

Our guest on our program today, we're visiting with Marty LaMaurie, Marty's a board member with the Boone County Historical Society, and Marty, thanks for taking time to visit with us. Well, thanks for having me. I always enjoy getting a chance to kind of let everybody know what's going on down at the History Center every month. Well, you guys have a lot of different things that go on. Summertime though, I just, as I told people earlier, I said, I don't know if we got plans for Reg Bride visitors or not, or being open during Reg Bride visitors, but it's one of the many things we'll find out today. That's exactly right. That was on our agenda last night. We had our monthly board meeting, which is again open to the public. You're welcome to come to our board meetings. They start at six o'clock. We try to keep them to about an hour, hour and a half, depending upon how many sideline discussions happen. We try to keep on track. So, everybody was present in our meeting last night, and first thing that we talked about, we do President's comments in our correspondence, and we had a postcard from the Boone County Fair about, I think, our livestock, the kids are going to be doing presentations about some background and information. We don't exhibit, we don't do a booth or anything like that at the fair. We did talk that maybe that's something we may do next year, but we also then received a generous $3,000 check donation for specifically for agricultural exhibits at the Center from a Lifetime member. So, that was a very, that was a nice thing to add to the meeting, and we will be working to expand that agricultural exhibit. We've had interest from a couple people on that. It's part of what we need to expand in order to become a part of silos and smokestacks. They had come and visited us last year, and they said, yeah, we think that's an area that needs to be amped up a little bit before we can actually give you the, we know you're in progress, but not quite there yet. So, and we knew that when you guys had set that up, that that was one of the areas where we were just getting started. Right, right, right. Good. Yeah, so good enough. We reviewed the quarterly report, and it was approved unanimously by the group. We made the decision to roll over. We have a couple of CDs, and we are going to renew those, and just we are just rolling over the interest. At this given time, we didn't have any particular urgent expenditure that needed to take place, and so we're continuing to just be, continue to try and grow some interest and keep those CDs renewed. We still run just a little short every month of being able to cover our monthly expenses, and continue to look at ways for, you know, obviously we rely heavily on our membership and just donation, and continue to look at other options for fundraising. So, if there's something fun that you'd like to have happen down at the History Center and think it'd be a good idea, give me a call. So, okay. Oh, business. Rat Brush, you mentioned that. We will be open on the 21st, and we will be open from 9 to 3, so we don't have anything special planned for them other than being open on the day that we normally aren't. We are going to put just out some signage out front on our digital, just welcome Rat Brice, and also a separate sign out front, just so people know that we're open. And again, I'll remind everybody about our typical open hours on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 10 to 2, and then also by appointment if those hours don't happen to work for you. Our understanding is that there's going to be shuttles coming from out at the Story Street location, the South Story, to come into town if people have interest in getting to downtown. Is that correct? Yeah, I think they're going to be operating something like that, moving them around. So, people can get off their bikes after riding them all day and just go from one place to the other and hang around. So, yeah, I think they're planning that. Right, so hopefully we can, you know, with a lot being set up down in South Story, hopefully people get into town for our local merchants downtown. Sure. Okay, computers. We've been looking at just kind of general overall upgrade of what we have for our computer and printer setup. We have one that we, a couple of refurbished ones. We also have the Microsoft licenses that have been renewed. One thing we don't have is a full access to our backup for all of our information for the volume. When we start scanning photos, we use that based fairly quickly, so we need to make sure we have good backups. So, Harry Volk is kind of our computer guy and keeps us up to, and Jeanne is very knowledgeable also with her work over at Iowa State. So, we'll continue to make sure we have what we need and also we have the computer accessible in our research room for people to come to visit to use also. And we do have a scanner. So, keeping up on that, landscaping. We have a member who has donated a couple of trees for us to plant. We again, we've held off on that with this lovely July weather we're having and really a little hotter even than usual. We had intended to plant and then decided to hold off. We'll probably be fall before we tackle our finishing up our landscaping of which we had a donation of last year. We've got phase one completed and phase two, we still need to complete. So, if you haven't seen our beautiful hollyhocks down by the back door, if you would like some hollyhock seeds, when the little pouches get dried up, if you want to pick a few, help yourself. That as well as the Asiatic lollies. So, we at least have a little bit of color down by the south entrance door there. Okay, Jordan Tornado exhibit. I know we talked about this last month because we've had our presentation and had such a nice turnout and a lot of interest. And it's really boosted our visitors since then during the month of June and even into July yet. I think I had one day where I had 12 or 15 people arrive within an hour on a Thursday, which is kind of unusual. But it was very refreshing to have that many people come and specifically to see the Jordan Tornado display. And again, people with all their stories about that day, which was really, really fun and interesting. So, we are going to continue to keep that display up. Initially, we thought we would just do it through June, but most likely we're going to keep that display up through August and or through part of August. And then we'll get ready for our next setup for the CIC Football Championship and Puffer Billy Days in September, which I'll talk about with the exhibit. Plenty going on there. Yeah, yeah. So, let's see. New business. Joe Howell is our person who's in charge of collections. And we have a specific group that are people that like to sort and dig of our volunteers. And we have items that are really need to either be sold or disclosed. So, given away, whatever we can come up with for that. The item we talked about trying to participate in crazy days, but my understanding is it's all going to be up in one location. I think up on Seventh Street, I believe, doesn't really work well for the items we have to have to haul all of that up to that location. So, I'm not sure we're going to participate in that, but we have record albums. We have some laminated world maps. We have mining CDs. We have the DMACC hub. We have duplicates of that. Through the years, from 1846, it was the superintendent of schools records of activities. We have a Madrid centennial book. We have duplicates of high school scrolls. We have life and Saturday evening posts. And we have a lot of ball jars, the big blue ones, more than what we can use. So, these items, we're just trying to say, you know, they're not things that we want to retain. It's because we have so many duplicates of a lot of them. So, we can, you know, batter around some ideas. I think we're going to be putting some items on Marketplace. So, kind of keep an eye there. But just so you know, we do have some of these items. If you have interest in anything that I just listed, let us know. We can certainly get those for you. I know we'll, we just need to be able to move things on that either are duplicate or not related to the mission. And just so that we keep on having space for new donations and getting all organized, still like we've been working hard to do up on dirt floor. You know, this is not the first time that we've touched on this. And even with previous visitors from the historical society, they appreciate people willing to donate and bring things and make them available for the museum. But when you start getting so much of the same thing, you just have to stop. I mean, there's just a space issue. Right. Exactly. And then I know I've told the story before. And apparently at one point in time that the people were allowed to just bring boxes of whatever and drop them off. Yeah. And it's like, okay, this is how we got a lot of this stuff. It's unrelated, but it actually could just, oh, you know, you can store your stuff here. So that must have been prior to the time of where we're at right now. So just don't think they're looking to sell off of the collection. No. We just have a lot of extra duplicate stuff. Yeah. No, this is duplicate. Exactly. No, we're not selling out of that stuff. Anyway. Okay. Let's see. Someone had inquired if we had an eight millimeter projector that someone could use to look at some films. We do not actually have an eight millimeter projector. We do have a form of, we're looking into how it works for sure. But it's not a projector, but you can view eight millimeter manually. And Ron Russell's been going through a lot of things upstairs. So we do have that available, but not an actual projector. So. McCose Park. They got an anniversary coming up when we talked about that. We don't, I don't know, are you aware if the city's doing anything for that? I haven't seen anything. At this point, I don't know what they, what they're planning. No. Okay. All right. Okay. Anyway, we just said, we have a video that we came across. It'll be posted on our Facebook page on that date on the 11th of July. And we also just did a park map up on second floor for display just to kind of make a notation for people that come through that it is a hundredth anniversary for the McCose Park. So. Okay. A couple of anniversaries that are coming up and I'll kind of segue into the exhibits report. Racing in Boone. There'll be a 60th anniversary in 2027. It has already been in contact with Toby Cruz about that as well as I believe her condom about race cars and kind of just starting to formulate that we need to start thinking this far ahead. 2027, that just sounds like, oh my gosh, here we go. We're already halfway through the summer already, which were once the fourth of July comes, it's about time to start school again. So. Time goes fast. Also, DMACC has their hundredth anniversary in 2027. So those are two items we kind of have on our radar. I'll just kind of segue like they said into the exhibits reports here just for a second. Okay. We already talked to about in regards to the Jordan tornado. One thing I do want to say on that there was some expenses involved with that. Again, we are more than happy to if anybody has a particular interest in a particular area or passion about something that they would like to be a sponsor or a partial sponsor of the exhibit to help cover some expenses. We're more than glad to do that. And we will make notation on the display that there was donation to help sponsor. So you can contact us if you do have interest. The 1976 Boone High School CIC champion football team that's recognition will be September 25th and 26th. We're going to be getting the display started soon. Our Lincoln Highway exhibit always moved from our first floor lobby up to second floor with a few added items. And for now, that will be its permanent home. I think that the Jordan tornado is in our first floor entryway, which is where we put our temporary exhibits. But with all the interest in the Jordan tornado, we're leaving that a little bit longer than usual for temporary. For puffability days, Joe, Barb, Ron, and Kathy have been finding puffability items that they've been sorting through up on third floor. And they're starting a staging area for our 50th anniversary display this fall. And this exhibit will be up on second floor. We already talked about McCoh's anniversary. And we already talked about Rackbrite already. The racing, again, we talked about that. I think that's it on the exhibit. For publications, as in the other areas, we have our updated brochure printed. We're distributing those around town. So we have the updated ones available for you. Trail Tales will be for summer 2026. Coming out will be the Jordan tornado. And we've started with that. Deb Duncan is our volunteer that helps us get that publication out. For fall Trail Tales, you can already look forward to a combination of all the other anniversary events that we've had for puffability and McCoh's Park and football. So we'd like to keep those updated for events. I guess my brain has always been thinking, too, I kind of think, are we keeping the log of current events that are happening? We know that we want to make sure that we're at the moment in time instead of maybe looking back quite so much. Passport to history, we have several of those printed and in the research room for children to use. Kind of a fun little thing that helps them be able to navigate their way and kind of fun as they're going through the museum. We have some selfie-inking stamps for the children to use to mark off the items that they find. So it's kind of a little treasure hunt, I guess. I mean, they're going through for the passport. That's it on the exhibit. What else do we have here? We're still waiting for some quotes from a couple of local companies. We're going to give them another call about concrete repair by the front door of the basement. We have some leveling that needs to take place. And our shelving in the balcony is completed, which has been nice. We'll talk about the new computers. And we'll be adding some more shelving in the military room and doing some refurbishing of some display cases. The building and the grounds are sitting pretty good. But we would like to... I was going to say on buildings and grounds, we would like to point out that even though it's been hot and muggy, our systems have been able to keep up. But we are looking at, again, doing more replacements, upgrading our HVAC. Exactly, exactly. It's funny that you mentioned that because one of the discussions that is down on that is there is an air conditioning unit that's up on the third floor. And that's a miserable place to work. Volunteers that are having to volunteer up there. And it's not been functioning quite right. So we have somebody looking into that for us. But yes, that's very true. We still more than welcome any donations and you can specify it to the HVAC system. That's exactly where we'll put it. You can specify we are still... The elevator is working well right now, but we still know long-term that's going to have to be a replacement also. Let's see, rentals. We continue to average about four rentals a month. You can contact me directly if you have any questions about rentals and as far as availability and costs. So we appreciate that as that's one of our income sources. And if you want to rent, don't forget, being a member can get you a discount. That's exactly right. It's $100 instead of $125. So $25 makes a difference. And so that's great. And if you become a board member, guess what? If you have interest in becoming a board member when one's open, then you get one free rental a year for being a board member. So there's another per. Okay. Okay. We still continue to staff with our individuals that get the tours started. And we do have a few items for sale. Kate Shelley. I'm going to be following up with the library. They're going to be doing their journaling time for their anniversary. Kate Shelley is scheduled for September. Need to follow up as far as exactly what the plan is for that event in September to honor Kate Shelley. And speaking of Kate Shelley, it was the anniversary on the 6th of her heroic act. And so, again, if you have a particular interest in that, I'll be opening the center tomorrow morning. And you can come down and do a walkthrough on Kate Shelley. If you've got kids that are off for the summer and you want to do one little educational spot, we have the ridges upstairs that's mock up there. And the kids can take a lantern and pretend they're walking across the Kate Shelley Bridge. So, okay, membership. We still continue to accept membership even though we're halfway through the year. We actually are continuing to have people that are still joining. So we appreciate that continued support and also the continued support of lifetime members that we have. We grandfathered in the group because we no longer do the lifetime membership. But we appreciate the donations and activities and support from those lifetime members. Grants and volunteers, we still continue to pursue grants to be able to complete projects. And also, we really appreciate the volunteers that we have right now. Are everybody working away at their particular area of interest? Things are going well. Again, it's summertime, so things get busy. And again, the activities that we have going on. The big thing is, we are open Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Come and visit, really. If you haven't been there or been to the, actually been down there to the museum in a while, what a great opportunity to come in on a Saturday or Friday, bring some friends and family, and just get a chance to see what's going on. Yeah, we love to have visitors. All right, Marty, I do appreciate you taking time to get us updated on what's going on. I know it's been, you've got a lot of different things in the works right now. You mentioned Kate Shelley, and I know that still you would like to get more people together that are interested in doing something down in Mongona down there. But again, summertime probably doesn't come together quite as easily as it would. Right, no, it doesn't. And also with, you know, our plan is, as we've already made the decision, we know the current depot is looking a little worn and torn. We realize that we're not, we're going to be removing the depot, but we didn't want to do that until after this event in September with the library. Sure. Well, we'll keep plugging along and keep updated with you. And again, I'll plan to visit with you again here. And what do we got next? August, holy smokes. Before you know. It's going to be fall before you know it. I know it, I know it. Well, we look forward to the next event. All right. Marty, I appreciate you taking time visiting with us, getting us updated. We'll talk to you again next month. Sounds good. Thanks so much. Stay cool. Marty LaMaurie again, a board member with the Boone County Historical Society, our guest on our program today.