Marty Lamoureux, Board Member, Boone County Historical Society, September 9, 2026

Let me turn on the microphone. That helps immensely on our program today. We are going to visit with Marty LaMaurie. Marty is a board member with the Boone County Historical Society. Marty, thanks for taking time visiting with us. You're more than welcome. I appreciate having a little time slot to visit with you and get some information out about the History Center. You guys did have a meeting? What first? It was on the first, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It was on the first. We meet the first Tuesday of every month at six o'clock. Again, those are public meetings. You don't have to be a member to attend those. But we'd love to have you be a member. Anyway, we started on Tuesday. We had, we always go through the usual protocols of agenda approvals and roll call and the meetings of the previous minutes of the previous meetings. Yeah. But we had really not a lot of correspondence. We had President's comments and correspondence. We didn't really have any notes or anything. But we did identify that we had had a donation come to us that was not labeled with anybody's name. And it was from a financial company. People do that often, just have a directly mailed from wherever they have their investments. And so luckily, the person who had done the donation, one of our Lifetime members actually came in to check to see if we'd received it. And luckily, then we could connect. So I guess just a word of caution to those of you. If you are Lifetime members or a member and you're going to be going through one of your investment companies, please ensure that your name is on the check because otherwise we have no clue who it's coming from. And we want to make sure that we acknowledge that appropriately. Yeah. Know who it came from and if they have any place special they want it to go. That's right. That's another very good point. You can specify where you want the funds to be utilized. So that's really important. Like if they wanted to keep contributing to an elevator, we would gladly take those, right? That will always take you to any elevator donations that we can get. A dollar at a time is how you get a new elevator, there you go. All right, Treasurer's report, can we do that quarterly so there was not a large amount just kind of go through any bills that need to be received? We do have a little bit of a challenge from actually speaking of elevators. It's an elevator company that we're being incorrectly billed for and are having a heck of a time getting it squared around. But we have one of our board members diligently working, wow, with contacting the company to resolve it. Interesting how things get mixed up, it's from another boom. There are numerous... Yes, there are. And yeah, so hopefully we'll get that resolved. And we keep reminding them... We don't need bad credit, but bad credit for unpaid bills. We don't need that. And we keep reminding them to like if they're going to your website, make sure you're going to Boone, Iowa. Exactly, exactly. The first one that comes up, I think it's not Virginia, I can't remember which one comes up. Could be Boone, North Carolina. North Carolina, I think it is North Carolina, that's right. Well, that's okay. Yeah, otherwise, we're staying good with finances, again, feeling comfortable with what we're doing as far as being cautious with our expenditures and keeping an eye on things and making appropriate investments with trying to gain some interest on some CDs and a few things like that. Again, we're still looking of kind of gathering ourselves to look forward to make sure that we're ensuring that there, for future boards in another 25 years, that there's still functioning funds available. All right. Okay, old business. We get just internally, we've got new front door keys distributed, we had those re-keys that we've taken care of, landscaping, the mother nature just is not cooperating. She's not cooperating with anybody right now, yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right, and you get what you get, but again, phase two, we have the plans already for that, we just need to get shopping and then get what stretch of weather this fall where we can plant as well as we have, I think I mentioned before, we have another member who is planting trees in memory of a family member, and so we'll get that project taken care of when the weather cooperates, so we're looking forward to that, but let's see. We have still with, and I'll do that during collections report too, but one of our board members, Ron Russell, goes through a lot of photos, that's his thing working on that, and we have often have unlabeled duplicate photos, and so it's kind of tough then, what do we do with these things because we don't know who they are, where they came from, who they came from, and then we don't really know how to use for it as far as an exhibit display, unless it's just some of the content that maybe is related to another display that we have, so collections committee, we'll kind of go through and have them review items before we dispose of anything, often it's kind of, we hate to throw something away that may be of value or interest, and sometimes that's kind of a challenge with some of the items that we have. I was going to say for those that might follow along, and I know you guys do post photos, old photos, things like that on your Facebook page, and again, seeking input, if anybody has any ideas of who some people might be or what the photo was. Right, right, that has been very helpful for us to be able to have that avenue to be able to have people help us identify things, that's a good point. Pufferbillie days, we do have some extra buttons on display and for sale in the shop, just for a meager amount, for a donation, we do not have our collection complete, we're missing some of the early ones, and I think I've mentioned that before as we've talked over the couple months preparing for Pufferbillie, we have a display up on second floor, but if you have any of the early, early days of Pufferbillie, the 70s is what we're missing, some of the 70s and 80s. We get up into the 90s, we've got a lot of them, and we have a lot of duplicates on those for some reason. We will be opening the center on the day of the parade at 1130, it'll be after the parade. So, we'll be open 1130-4 on that Saturday, and we'll be open on Thursday and Friday, our usual hours during that event, so I know the community is looking forward to that celebration, but come up and see what we have up on second floor, some of the memorabilia, some of the t-shirts, some of the posters, and that kind of stuff, that's kind of fun. I know my mom was always, my mom was a clerk on the railroad, and it was always a big deal to the CNNW railroad individuals that they loved this celebration, they thought it was just great, and I can remember she always had to go down and have a bear in a broth, on Thursday night, ahead of time, and they had their railroad hats specifically, I should have saved that hat, I was a kid, I always thought it was goofy, but anyway, she always enjoyed that, so I have some good memories of that. And actually, Puffer Billy Day is where my current husband and I met each other, so I have some fond memories of Puffer Billy, there you go. Well, over the years, and their 50th anniversary too. I know, right, that is pretty amazing, I know, I think that's really fun, so I attended at one of the downtown meetings where they were looking at, just trying to, we're looking at the traffic flow and where things are set up for Puffer Billy and working with the downtown merchants, we're part of shops on stories, so I did attend a meeting that was very good information, very helpful and good discussion.

Let's see, the other thing we're working on, just project-wise, again, locating items in the center, just for instance, if someone comes in and says, I'm looking for a helmet from World War II, that may be not a good example, but individuals coming in seeking information, not every one of us has as much working knowledge as the other, as board members or as volunteers, as to the location of everything in that building. And so often, sometimes I'll have to say, you know, I'm going to have to find out where that's at, I'll get your name and number, we'll get back to you, but we really like to be able to meet the need of the individuals coming in for information at the time, so we are looking at developing, we're going to do a special work session to do a cataloging to help make it a little bit easier for those working at the center to locate things. The other thing is, we just do some internal organizing of frequently used forms that we use, for instance, if someone brings a donation in, we usually call it a deed of gift form and have that spelled out appropriately so that that goes with the item and goes to the collections director and they take care of the item then. So, there's a whole process for that.

Let's see, one thing we have, besides, we have a 60th birthday party to share for us, for the county historical society, that'll be held on November 8th and more planning will need to take place at our next meeting of what we're going to do for that event, for ideas and whether or not we've decided yet if it's a membership only or if it's a public invitation, we're still working on the details of that, but keep an eye out or kind of mark that on that for something to do on November 8th.

Otherwise, new business, we set our date for the annual meeting, it doesn't seem like we should be doing that yet, but we are. We thought we should kind of get ahead of the curve and get that on the calendar. So, January 23rd, again, we're going to do the Saturday, we did that last year and we did it in conjunction with a Saturday with a scholar and a lunch followed by the meeting. And we felt like that format was more successful than what we'd had previously when we used to do it on the typical evening time, you know, it's dark and cold in January and evening and most people don't even want to get out, so hopefully we'll have improved attendance and participation by having the meeting during the daytime on a Saturday and hope mother nature cooperates with this. Well, you did have a pretty good turnout. You had a very good turnout this last year when you did that, that it was a good opportunity. And not everybody stayed for it, but they understood that this you could be there for the annual meeting too. You could take the time to do that. Right, right, right. Because that's all a portion of the, yeah, a portion of the people and it's open to public too, but, you know, you're right. But we had a better turnout of membership than we've ever had since I've been on the board since 2019 by having it on a Saturday and having it, you know, to follow Saturday with a scholar. So, we're looking forward to that. And along with that, the annual meeting, we're working on the formation of a nominating committee. We haven't really had the need to do that up till now because last year, I believe, we just had one, only one board member who was up for renomination, it was a current one who was up again and she was voted in. So, we didn't have to seek any additional board members. This year, we will be seeking a replacement board member and we're currently in the process of just reviewing bylaws about board member terms and guidelines for our nominating committee. But it's not too early if you do have an interest in becoming a board member, contact one of our current board members, if you just have questions, you're thinking, oh, maybe I'd like to do that, but I don't know what do you do, what are my responsibilities, how much time do I have to spend, you know, those kind of questions, we're glad to just talk to you about it and give you some information so you could make a decision about it. So, right now, we feel like we're a pretty cohesive board and function together in a productive manner. So, anything about the annual meeting or upcoming new additions? Let's talk about, you finally took down the Jordan tornado display or it's been kind of changed, but the big one that's going on right now, just well tell everybody. Oh, what's coming up is the one for September 24th and 25th, the date is Friday and Saturday and it's for the 50th anniversary of the Boone High football team, CIC championship team. And that's been kind of really, it's been a fun one for Jeannie, who is our exhibits person and is the brains behind all of our exhibits, but she also has a personal investment because her brother was on the team, so that's kind of her era of individual. So, that group I think has had fun putting together what they're doing for the displays and also we're going to be hosting them on Saturday and they'll be hosted Friday night at the Boone High football game also, so that'll be fun. Right now the lobby is bare and it looks funny because we've been so used to having that Jordan tornado information up for such a long time, but you know, we're looking forward to that to the next one. So, and then I think after that September event, up until our November, our birthday party, October, we're kind of taking a little bit of a kind of a deep breath to kind of step back a little bit, kind of recess, think about kind of, you know, kind of where are we at, what did we accomplish this year, where do we want to go future for the year, kind of do some planning sessions I think during that month of October. Let's see, we will have, Harry is our board member who is on the Shopson Story representative and we will be participating in the spooky window and haunted building event in October. Good. We'll be in charge of getting that taken care of, so we won't be doing zero, but anyway. We're looking into what's available still on an ongoing basis for grants, for items, the priority items of what we need and what we will be requesting in our grant writing and what we're seeking is archival storage. We still need some more of the flat for the big clap maps and that's just, you know, made of the special materials so that things are preserved. We also still have a project that's out there on the to-do list is some outside exhibits. As you know, we have the one Lincoln Highway post and the plaque outside on the west side of the building and we want to propagate that same type of style around the outside of the building on the south side and on the north side. Probably not on the east side because of the grade of the yard and the bath there and the HVAC equipment. We probably will not put it on that site, but so those are having some costs involved in those plaques. We do have a contact of where those were made initially to put together a request for financing for putting together those and then also we are still have on our goal to expand the agriculture display that we have upstairs that we've started. Again, just to repeat information, we've worked with smoke stacks and silos. We'd like to be on their list of places and advertising in a part of that. We are members with them, but we are not labeled as a location as of yet. We went through the assessment and the thing they said we are lacking is in our agricultural display. We will continue to pursue that through grants. We do have a potential grant with an individual who is wanting to help with additional organizing and archiving of our Boone Biblical College. We have one volunteer who works specifically with that, but this is an outside individual with a grant. All right. Good. Okay. Let's see. One idea that we came across, we have the posters of, well, it's Lincoln Highway and then also, I think, I can't remember what the second one is, the black and white posters there, like 20 by, I don't know, what the dimensions. They're fairly large, black and white. We're trying to figure out what we can do. We have a large amount of them. One of the volunteers suggested, let's do a coloring contest. We may end up doing that with the large posters, maybe with adults, but we came down to that. We need to shrink down the look and maybe do a coloring book for kids. We do have the passport that we put together for the kids with the stamp, and the kids have enjoyed that when it comes to the center, and then we also have bookmarks and pencils and at least a few things for them to kind of get the kids interested. Now that school is back on again, we hope to be involved with the, we are, we will be involved with the EDGE program. We have students that come and help do cleaning and organizing, and then also with the EDGE students that take on an improvement project with us, who's had the group last year, and we hope to have them again this year, so that we work with the schools and help them do involvement in what information we can help share with the kids about the history boom. Once they find out who knows what they'll end up doing, they could come back to it. That's right, that's right. Okay, that's kind of the end of our general meeting. As far as committee reports, I can go into that quick. These collections, again, we did, that group continues to work with locating boxes and documents that are being sorted, and then put into our past perfect, their systems, so that they have a home location. It's a slow process, but these guys are diligent, and it's really pretty amazing. Jessica Stanley was our previous president, and she happened to come in with, what happened up on the third floor, and was really amazed with the progress that had been made up in that area compared to when she was on the board. It's always nice to know that you're making progress, because sometimes in the middle of those big, long, arduous cleaning projects, you think you're not getting anywhere that you are. Also, it helped to have Harry installed new lights upstairs, so they have a lot better visualization of what they're doing. That's in our collections, I think. Again, I can't kudos to Joe Howell. She's just done an amazing job of really getting the collections on track. Ever since I started visiting with folks from the Historical Society, getting that collection itemized or getting it logged so people could find things when they needed to, that's always been a challenge, because it's a big election. I know I've said this before, apparently at one point in time, the History Center, a lot of people come to drop off boxes of stuff, and it was like, seriously? It's like, okay, we don't have quite enough storage space to be able to do that, but we're getting that. Okay, exhibits report. Jordan Tornado, we really already talked about that, and we already talked about the 1976 championship football team, too. We also talked about Puffer Billy Days, racing in Boone, and it's kind of interesting because you've got Supernationals going on right now, but that is in January of 2027. We will start planning some about the 2027. I think that's the date that we have in mind of 2027 for that, as far as the racing in Boone. I think that's correct. I don't want to misspeak, but I think that's right. Exhibit will at least run in August and September of 2027, and it'll matter how we expand it, depending upon how it develops as we collect items and information. As you start going forward, is that going to be one where you'll be looking at, you're going to need the public to provide some info? Right, right. The public, we want any items or stories or history about what's available, looking to form a committee of experts again. So if you are a person with a lot of information and background and knowledge about racing in Boone, we would love to have you help us participate in any way that you can. That'd be great. Okay. Okay. I think that's it on exhibit publications. Those of you that are on our mailing list as members should have received your most recent trail tales. We are pretty excited about that issue. We kind of did a little extra and did some color on that one, and it's the Jordan Tornado one. So I know, Jim, you should have gotten yours. Yes. What did you think? It was there. I saw it. I had to get it out of somebody's hands. Oh, okay. But yes, no. Who might that have been? Well, I don't know, but she was reading. So she likes to read all those things. So yeah. That's good. That's good. So when we do have extra available, if there's anybody, we have them available in the shop for sale. If there's an additional copies that you'd like to have. And if you are a member and for some reason you are not receiving emails or you're not receiving your trail tales, please contact me. I think I finally got it figured out how to convert files so that you don't have to ask for permission to open up minutes in attachments. And so I think I kind of got that mastered finally for those of you who are on the emailing last. So that should be simpler now. Okay. And I think that's it on publication. Really, your next meeting is going to be coming up then on the 6th of October. Right. Next regular meeting. And like you said, kind of a breather during October. Yeah. Yeah. The one thing we do have on the books is we are going to be moving out some items. If rentals are still going well, membership, I'm still actually receiving some membership even down into now. And we're kind of getting down to the wire of the year a little bit. There's only a few more months, but we certainly appreciate that. And we are going to be this coming Saturday on the 12th. We have a work crew that will be removing the items that we are going to keep out of the Kicks Shelley Depot. So then the next step can be that we will, the building will be graced, removed at some time later fall. Okay. And then we can start with the planning of, well, now that we have a clean slate, what do we want to do going forward as far as some type of structure down there. So we're excited to get that part done. Okay. We also are going to be hosting an event or help co-hosting, really, we're just providing the space down at the center with the library on September 22nd. For information on that, contact the library. They are providing the speaker and we will be open for touring at the center during that time for individuals who are attending with the railroad display as well as the Kicks Shelley display. Good. So that's part of their 125-year journaling. All right. I'm running out of time and I do want to thank you for taking time to kind of review all the things that are going on, again, the big one coming up here in basically a week or so. And I know Jeannie's pretty pumped up about it. She's already shown a couple of people what some of the things are she's collected for that. But again, getting ready to go with that 1976 CIC conference championship football team, 50th anniversary of that. And again, people need to stop by and again, just if they have not been in there for a while or if it's been, I mean, I mean, there's so many interesting things that they boom county businesses, you know, they forget about taking a look at those things and they may not have seen that for. Right. Years. Right. And they might even not realize how much is in there. So. Right. Right. There's a lot there. We're always glad to welcome visitors. It's always, always fun when we're down there working as volunteers. That's what makes our jobs enjoyable when we're there. Then people show up and we can see people enjoy the tour and visit with them. Marty, I appreciate it. I look forward to visiting with you again next month. That sounds great. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye now. Marty LaMaurie from the Boone County Historical Society Board.