Marty Lamoureux, Boone County Historical Society Board Member, May 13, 2026

And on our program today we are going to take some time and visit with Marty LaMaurie. Marty is a board member with the Boone County Historical Society. Thanks for joining us, Marty. Thanks for having me, Jim. Another whole month flying through and we've got things going on and I've been telling people already that one of the first things up, I know you've got the the built-in place that you got a presentation with Charles Irwin coming up in another week already. Right, that's right. We're partnering up with the library. They contacted us and asked us to be a part of their event that they've developed. So Genie Wipeke is going to be partnering up and has already met with Charles and kind of put their presentation information together. If you are on Facebook, please go to the Boone County Historical Society page and there's actually a posting about content for that. And I know the library's also got information on it as well on theirs. Right, right, right. But we're excited to be able to partner. Yeah, Charles has done these kinds of things before so this will be an interesting one to again ties in with some of the things that that they're doing at the library. Part of their 125th anniversary, you know, we've talked about all the other celebrations and things that we're recognizing and they've got a lot of things that are tied in with again the Ericsson Public Library too. Right, right. It's Wednesday, May 20th from 6 to 8 at the Boone County Historic History Center and it's in conjunction with Ericsson Public Library like we've been saying. We will be hosting Charles Irwin to talk about the planning of Boone, original industries and more. The presentation is from 6 to 7 o'clock and then we'll be followed by a walking tour of downtown Boone highlighting the history of some of the buildings and what occupied those buildings over time. It's a free event but the library is asking that you register at Boone.lib.ia.us-event. So, let's get right on that and do that. We're excited. It's just learning about the planning trends in the industry that shape the town that we have now and I think it's always just kind of fun. They're doing guided walk, photo spots and then they're encouraging a journaling with this which is kind of an interesting concept. That's the library with any questions too. I'm sure you can get a hold of them but then in the fall, I believe in September we haven't put all of that together yet where they're doing a portion on Kate Shelley. Sure, okay. So, got a lot of different things that are happening which is good. We like having it all and it's great having partners teaming up with you on this. Right, right, right. Okay. And I thought I don't know if anybody noticed too on our page also with fairway stores. We have a very nice display for fairway at the History Center as well as a very good working relationship with them. They've been very supportive of the History Center. I think it was yesterday, was 88 years ago, fairway opened its doors for the first time in Boone. So, since 1938, they have been a part of the community and a very vital and important part of the community. I might be a little bit biased. Just a little. All right, so let's talk a little bit about the Historical Society here as you get into this month of May. I know you guys have met already and what are we focusing on? Well, we did, we had our board meeting so I can always go through that with you and I'll just kind of do hit the highlights. We met on Tuesday May 5th. Again, we meet the first Tuesday of every month at six o'clock and we're happy to have guests. You do not have to be a member. It's open to the public. So, we had information speaking of Charles Irwin, Greta Irwin, who is one of our members also received an alumni recognition award from ISU. So, we thought that was nice to be able to, we sent her a little card to recognize that. Treasury report, nothing new to report. We just do quarterly reporting now. We keep very transparent if you have questions about finances or expenditures. We are more than glad to share that information with anybody. Old Business Shops and Story. Harry Vonk, one of our board members attended the meeting last month and he presented information about the History Center to the group and we are now accepted as part of Shops and Story. So, we're excited to have that partnership with the downtown businesses. We will be attending their monthly meetings. We feel like we keep in the loop about what's going on downtown somewhat with all of that. Harry will keep us posted and look at what we look forward to participation in some upcoming events. We held a volunteer event, which we did on the 18th of April, Saturday morning. We just did before we opened up from 8.30 to 10. We had coffee and Dutch oven treats and juice and some nice conversation. We made some certificate, volunteer appreciation certificates for those who have helped us. We probably had half the volunteers there, but we were glad if who could be there. And again, we really appreciate the time that they put into helping us out. Again, you can volunteer at the center without being a member and you can be a member and not have to volunteer. And everybody says, oh, I'm not a historian. You don't have to be a historian. There's tons of things that we do that don't mean that you have to be able to regurgitate historical information. So, we are going to be having that volunteer event again next year. We already have it on our calendar. We are going to be open that day. Any further planning as far as what we're going to be doing is still being formulated. We will be advertising for RGRI and using our digital sign and signboard out front. So, we will be open if people are wanting to possibly visit downtown or maybe just need a place to cool off. We'll see what the temperatures like that. It's July, yeah. Yeah, it's July. And so, hopefully, yeah, I'm sure, hopefully, we can there's some things that'll be attracting some of the people to our downtown. We have been working on some computer upgrade. I think I've talked about that before as being one of our needs. And we had an opportunity for some refurbished so that we didn't have the full cost. So, we're excited to work on that and get Microsoft Office installed in it. Be ready to roll off. You mean you're up to 2026 now? Yeah, I think so. I think we are. We don't have any of that the old stuff. Well, I think we're good. Landscaping, not really any good update on that. We're going, Ryan and I are going to go shopping. We haven't gotten that done yet. It's always his busy time of year with his business, but we will get that phase two taken care of. We're excited for that. We have a person who is wanting to plant a tree in memory at the History Center in memory of a relative. So, we are working on a tree selection of what type and where we're going to locate that. Apparently, we want to have something that's appropriate for urban planning. And apparently, the DNR has a list of trees that are appropriate for that. Actually, under new business, we really didn't have anything new. Other than our next upcoming, it's new. It's just reinforcing our next presentation will be in June for our Saturday with the scholar. And this is the one in the Jordan tornado. That will be on June 6th. We couldn't do it on the exact date of the tornado, which would have been the 13th due to the speakers not being available. You've got to have speakers to do your presentation. I think they have done a presentation of such in the past. I think it's very popular. I don't think we're not doing anything about any type of a registration, but I think it's going to be that I'm aware of at this point. But I'm sure it'll be first come, first serve, and try to squeeze in everybody. There may just be some standing rooms. So I think you did. You did put out a call, didn't you, for some families? I mean, I know there were families that had materials and items they were making available. Yes, yes, yes. Jamie has been working with those individuals. They've met numerous times and numerous families, and they've been amazing at getting together photos and identifying people in the photo and putting together their stories. And as we've talked before, when we've been talking about this presentation coming up, people who are from Boone and we're here for that particular day. Everybody's got their story about what happened on that day. Committee reports are a collections group. Kathy is one of our volunteers, Yul Hoven, has continued to sort and organize in the balcony and in the attic. And it's just amazing sometimes what they uncover. And Joe and Joe Howell and Bart McDougal continue to get things put into the computer and to our past perfect system so that we have items that are catalogued as well as we have a location so we can find things. And we're clearing our backstage area for those of you who have been up on second floor on the east end of the building, there's a stage and at one time they used it for performances. But we are using it as a staging area for exhibits so that the upcoming exhibits, we have a place to kind of put things out and kind of think of where we're going to put and set up and then locate them where they're going to be exhibited. We are going to be doing a temporary exhibit, well we actually put it for America 250, there's an exhibit on second floor in one of the cases. Continue with photo boxes in the library, that's always a huge job of sorting through photos that have been donated and figuring out if we can identify who they are, where they came from, that type of thing. Janet continues to work in organizing Boone's Good Hopeville College archives. And Ron Russell has been taking glass slides of very old Boone pictures over to the Ames Public Library and has learned how to use the scanning device over there so that you can save those old glass pictures to a flash drive. That's collections report. Building is in ground, we're still waiting for quotes for our concrete repair that needs to take place by the back door or south door by that basement. So working on doing some reshelving. Future things that we still have to do is refurbish some display cases and add some shelving to the military room. One thing we are looking into is the last time that there was any work done with our rough. We want to make sure that we're staying ahead of the game and not waiting for a problem with that. So we had that discussion at the meeting. So we'll do research to find that the last time that it was checked to make sure that things are intact. Exhibit. We already talked about May 20th. We already talked about the Jordan Tornado. I don't think there's anything else in there. At least not at this time. Right. For the Jordan Tornado, we are waving admission that day. Okay. We're through the, we are not asking for that, but we'll always take donation. So the next thing that'll be up and coming will be September 25th and 26th. We do have the dates confirmed on that for that. Boon. Hi. I'm the I.C. Champion football team. Most of the team, the cheerleaders, managers and coaches have been reached and they have, I think I said who the planning team is that before is Jeannie Whitekey, Mike Ellsbury, Jeannie's brother, Pat Carpenter, got so well. Sue Cassotti's in the stead and Bob Sloan. They'll be honoring the team at the home football game on Friday, September 25th, and we will be hosting the exhibit on Saturday, the 26th. So the exhibit will actually be up prior to the events on the 26th. We'll probably have it up the first part of September. All right. Good. Lincoln Highway exhibit. We still have some of the, we have that down on first floor right now and we're looking at possibly moving that permanently up to the second floor. Puppet Billy days. We have been finding items and it started in our staging area that I talked about some items for the 50th anniversary of Puppet Billy days, which will be in the fall. So that working on that. McCos Park has their 100th anniversary and we have been in touch with a couple of the perk board individuals that we are interested in doing something with them. I know they've had a pretty big focus on, well, focus on doing your focus groups for information for their tenure plans. So we'll continue to have conversations with them about what we can do with that. One of the future things that we have an interest in doing is the something on the Boone Speedway on racing and Boone because it's been so prominent. There was an individual who stopped by and donated some items and he has a lot of information on it. Thinks 2027 is maybe 60 years since the new track was built out of Boone. If anybody has Boone Speedway and race information, we would love to have that so we could start to put together information for whenever that anniversary is. Okay. Publications. We've got updated brochures. If you'd like to have some to display at your business, we'll be more than glad. We have a couple individuals that are going around and distributing some. But if we've missed you and you don't have some yet, please get a hold of us and we'll be glad to drop some off. We'll be doing the spring trail tails on the Jordan tornado. The fall trail tails will be on the Puffer Billy and Football and Coast Park and also our 60th anniversary. And again, we continue to work on trying to secure grants. If anybody has information on grants, we are more than happy to entertain the idea of applying for it. If anybody has talent in grant writing, we would love to see you and have you help us out with some of the complexities that can happen. They can get a little bit detailed and somebody who's navigated it before does a better job than somebody who's brand new at it. There are skills and grant writing skills are much appreciated. They are very much so. As far as rentals, we continue to have our average about four month rentals downstairs. Shop, we still have that open. I think we talked about our new volunteer that we have that's working there independently now. Membership, we still are still receiving membership renewals and some new ones. So thank you for that. We appreciate it. And we are going to continue to work on business membership relationships. Kate Shelley, we still are looking for a date when we can get people together to clear out the building. I have two new volunteers that are on the Kate Shelley committee. Steve Urban, Andrew Swanson, who are members have joined me and I'm contacting a third individual so that we are going to have a start discussion and some further planning for that. I'm excited to work with them. And we received our annual compliance forms that I have completed. Just need a signature from the president and we'll get those mailed in and returned to the Army Corps. All right. Always something to do. And especially this time. That is from the meeting that I can think of. Especially this time of the year you're getting a lot of and it is getting to be more active. I think hopefully you're getting a couple of bus tours that will be swinging by. Right. We just had a school tour. We've had a couple of school tours. Thanks for mentioning that. We just had Trinity Luther and I think it was fifth and sixth graders or fourth and fifth graders. Not sure. We just had them on Tuesday. And then the Ed students that group is coming through on the 19th. So we feel like that's a good thing that we have been able to have a few more school tour involvement. We really enjoy that. Sue, our president was also going to be attending. I think it believe it was on Friday the the 8th of May. The Ed students were doing I think their presentation at the school. We've been working with two of the Ed students at the center. And we enjoy our involvement with the youth and encourage that. Yeah. It's amazing. Well, they get to learn about their history, don't they? So. Right. Right. All right. Good. Well, it's been busy and I know we've got the things that are coming up and people go on to the Facebook page. Again, Boone County. What? Is it just Boone County history? Boone County Historical Society. Yeah. And easy to find. Once you get there, you know. Yeah, you'll know it. I think there might be there might be there might be two pages. And so just make sure you get on the one that's the most current and active by the date of what we've posted. Okay. And easy enough to do. And again, we've got a lot of different things in events that are going on. It's easy to follow along on Facebook if you want to do that. You do have the website. You can do that too. And get that membership and you get you get trail tales too. What? Right. Exactly. And also then every month, you'll get the board meeting minutes. I send those out to the membership so that, you know, of course, I know I always go over from here, but that way you get copies of the questions. All right. All right. Marty, I appreciate you taking time getting us up to date on what's going on here. It's early in the season. We got a lot of things going on. I'm looking at when we're going to visit probably in June and I'm going to say we will have been by the presentation on the Jordan tornado. So it'll be coming up. We'll visit after that. Right. It will be the it will be after that. So it'll be fun to be able to recap what happened with that. So all right. Right. Yeah. Very good. Well, you have a great day. Thanks for taking time visiting with us, getting us up to date on everything that's going on. Appreciate it. And we'll try to keep everybody else updated on all the activities going on down at the historical center. Thanks so much. You're more than welcome. I'm more than glad to entertain any questions or ideas or suggestions. You can call me directly 515-291-8108. All right. You have a great one. Thanks so much. Thank you. You too. Bye.