Just got off the phone with Ms. Langston, who is the director of the
History Center in downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She was referred to me
by Rod Blocksome, K0DAS, at Rockwell-Collins. She had just finished a
year-long Rockwell-Collins exhibit, focusing on Arthur Collins, W0CXX
(SK). We had an interesting, half-hour phone discussion about what it
takes to put a Museum exhibit together.
Her exhibit was about 1500 square feet, though she acknowledged that they
were "crammed in" at that space, and would have been easily able to fill
twice that (she also didn't seem fazed about the prospect of filling
4000 square feet, as we are currently faced with, as an exhibit with a
lot of artifacts can easily fill that space up, according to her).
First, the good news:
- Rockwell-Collins not only has a considerable amount of historical
documentation, but also radio equipment
- The History Center has a lot of graphics arts, photos, and
story-boards from their (completed) exhibit that could be reused for our
exhibit
Both entities are quite likely to be willing to make loans to the SAC
Museum for our exhibit. Rockwell-Collins has a lot of equipment, but
not a lot of museum-quality displays. Conversely, the History Center
has a lot of the display material.
- There's an annual meeting of the Collins Collector's Association in
Cedar Rapids on the weekend of August 2-3. It offers a tour of the
Rockwell plant, the antenna farm and HF stations (including the
opportunity to operate W0CXX), and several meetings and seminars. Rod
says that there is ample opportunity to meet with people who would be
interested in contributing to our exhibit in terms of equipment,
documentation, and even oral history. I will definitely be there, and
would welcome any traveling companions, but I need to hear from
interested individuals right away (the cutoff for discounted hotel rooms
at the Sheraton is tomorrow, though there are other budget accommodations
like the Red Roof Inn, Motel 6, etc., and the mail-in registration
deadline is the 26th)
- Ms. Langston (coincidentally) is coming to Omaha on July 22nd and 23rd
(Tuesday and Wednesday) to visit the Western Heritage Museum and Omaha
Children's Museum. I took the liberty of inviting her to the Bellevue
Wendy's lunch on Wednesday. She thinks she can make it, but we can
otherwise make arrangements to meet in the evening if she can't. All
interested parties are welcome (and encouraged) to attend. I'm hoping
for a productive question-and-answer session between Ms. Langston and
our prospective pool of volunteers (and some of our SACMARC members are
very good at bringing up questions and issues that haven't even occurred
to me). I'll have more specific information as the date nears. We
might alternatively meet in the evening, based on everyone's
availability. Regardless of whether the local meeting works out, she
will definitely be in Cedar Rapids during the weekend of August 2nd and
3rd, and has invited us to meet with her at the History Center Saturday
afternoon (after the plant tour, but before the banquet that evening).
Now the bad news (though I would recast it as an "opportunity to
excel"):
- Ms. Langston's estimate of our required budget was about four times
what Mr. Poyner estimated (her budget was about $6,000, which she
characterized as almost "shoestring"). However, that simply offers us
greater challenges with regard to finding grant money (not only should
we follow up with our existing two leads, we might want to explore other
options such as the state Arts Council, or possibly the local SAC
historical organizations such as the SAC Society). Quite frankly, I
don't see funding as a fatal obstacle as long as we put our minds
together towards submitting grant proposals to every entity that will
take them. Our budget is likely to be less than hers due to the fact
that we can reuse a lot of displays, and since we won't be using some of
the most rare artifacts (like near-mint Collins radios from the Collins
family collection), we won't likely have to fabricate custom display
cases. She agreed with me that the military/veteran focus of our
exhibit would make it much more dependent on oral/personal history than
having almost every last piece of Collins equipment made over a certain
period (as her exhibit attempted to do).
Looks like, though we are still at the early planning stages, we are
right on track.
73, Paul, K3FU
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