Centennial exhibits, funding needs focus of history museum director

story by Aric Mitchell
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“I really don’t have anything you’d be interested in.”

Leisa Gramlich usually hears this before she receives a collection of Lincoln High School yearbooks. (During the days of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement, Lincoln was a Negroes-only educational institution in Fort Smith.)

Gramlich hears this before discovering photos of the 1937-1949 Fort Smith Giants minor league baseball team.

She also hears this before finding frontier clothes in the attic boxes of citizens who didn’t know what they had.

The statement occurs as much as the question, “Where is Judge Parker?” during days when the Fort Smith Museum of History is open for business.

Gramlich oversees the city’s colorful past as executive director of the Museum. She has served for the last two years, though her fascination stretches back much further.

“I fell in love with the place when I was growing up here. It’s a love I have passed along to my son, and hope to preserve for the people of Fort Smith,” she said.

CENTENNIAL EXHIBITS
To grow membership and contributions, Gramlich hopes the upcoming Centennial exhibits will draw attention from the community and lead to an increase in donations. The next planned opening, “The Fort in Flight: Bud Mars and the City’s Aviation History,” opens May 21 on the 100th anniversary of the city’s, and the state’s, first flight. Mars took off from League Park, now the location of the Terry Motel, and adjacent to the Kay Rodgers Park area.

“Mars flew a Curtiss Biplane at an altitude of 75 feet,” Gramlich said. “It wasn’t much, but it was a start.”

The opening reception will be at 5 p.m. with presentation by pilot and aviation expert Wayne Haver at 6 p.m. It is located in the Boyd Gallery at the Museum and is free and open to the public.

While there, patrons will learn about a century of aviation history specific to the area, which includes the founding of the 188th Fighter Wing. This Arkansas National Air Guard unit is primarily responsible for the annual Fort Smith Air Show that has become an integral part of the city’s economy. The exhibit will also spotlight female aviators Betsy Kelly Weeks and Louise McPhetridge Thaden, who along with Amelia Earhart, were members of the women’s aviation group “The Ninety-Nines.”

Separate from the exhibit but also housed within the Museum is the story of Pierce McKennon. McKennon, an ace WWII fighter pilot and Purple Heart winner, is credited with 12 aerial victories. He was shot out of the sky three times during the war. Ironically, he died in a plane crash in 1947 during a routine training flight.

“Many fail to realize what we are sitting on in this community. Our connections to the past are not minor or insubstantial. The citizens and events that have graced Fort Smith over the years have had far-reaching effects on our nation’s history,” Gramlich explained during a recent interview. “Each site has its own story to tell. The National Historic Site documents our effects on law and order. Miss Laura’s Social Club offers a look into the world’s oldest profession. The National Cemetery serves as final resting place to some of our most notable historical figures. The Museum complements each of these areas and sheds light on daily life in Fort Smith as it used to be.”

MUSEUM NEEDS
Another area of importance that most fail to realize, according to Gramlich, is the amount of work and funding the Museum needs to survive.

The main exhibits of the museum have not been updated since the early 1990s. Gramlich hopes to correct this in the next several years. The $4-5 million price tag, however, could be a problem. In addition to this, the freight elevator was recently condemned and is in need of a mandatory update which will cost around $600,000.

Despite donors contributing $42,400 through just the fourth month of the year, the upcoming projects make the light at the end of the tunnel too far to see.

“A landmark like the Museum will always require upkeep. Our donors have responded in amazing fashion to the $100,000 Centennial goal, but in order for the Museum to continue, more needs to be done. Heating and air costs are our highest expense, and are a necessity to protect the artifacts. Salary costs are limited to six part-time employees and one full-time. We also have an army of passionate volunteers. But when snags like the elevator or the exhibit updates occur, it spreads us pretty thin.”

Through direct mail to past donors and an aggressive outreach to students at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, Gramlich hopes to grow support for the Museum in the coming years and meet each goal. She and her staff also seek grants to tackle projects such as the freight elevator.

“Grants are helpful,” Gramlich says, “but they limit us in time and freedom. They have specific guidelines to follow, and focus on one individual goal. We are looking at one (grant) from the National Endowment for the Humanities that could solve the freight elevator problem, but it is a matching-based program. It still requires approximately $400,000 of fundraising on our end to meet the criteria.”

The Centennial year at the Museum of History also sees exhibits on American-Indian Realism (ends May 14); antique weaponry such as firearms, swords and knives (beginning August 19); and a recreation of the museum as it looked when housed in the Commissary (now a part of the National Historic Site, beginning October 21).