-CL     

Hanging…Together, Separately, Up, Out and In There

A perspective from Museum CEO Christopher Lee. August 2004

The community is hanging together for the Columbus weekend, and, to paraphrase Ben Franklin, that is much better than hanging separately.  

Two years ago, different groups in Boalsburg organized and publicized their separate October activities to little fanfare. Last year, the community united and presented a unified identity for the Columbus weekend, garnering much more media recognition and attendance.

This year’s events (see separate story) will benefit even more from the advance joint planning going on and from a theme that unites us all: “Cultural Harmony Through Cultural Awareness.”

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Let me share with you the remarks I made in May at the conclusion of Music at the Boal Mansion featuring violinist Jeffrey Zehngut playing Mozart, Beethoven and Prokofiev. When Jeff finished, I saw members of the audience shaking their heads in awe. I stood before them and said this: 

“In 1898 Theodore Davis Boal and his French-Spanish wife Mathilde added the ballroom to the Boal Mansion to indicate that Americans could be as cultured and civilized as Europeans. Tonight at Music at the Boal Mansion we have implemented that intent. How can music so profound be made so accessible? And how can a moment so timeless, be so brief?” 

I only wish more people knew of the extraordinary experience offered by this May musicale. It truly is transforming for all those who attend.  Come hang out with the arts next May when we do it again.

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Speaking of hanging separately -- without your help… 

It was a careful and wise choice to do the complete rewiring last year for the firm bid price, even though it meant taking out a big loan because the bid price came in higher than predicted by the architect. To do half later would have greatly increased the cost of the project which was so essential to safeguarding the collection and displaying it well to our visitors. 

As a result of this tough choice, the Museum has been living frugally, trying to pay down the debt.  You can imagine our dismay, then, when the oil company recently announced that the Mansion’s old boiler cannot safely go through another winter. The cost to replace it? About $5,000. Ouch!   

Don’t hang up! We depend on your help which can make all the difference right now as we try to figure out what to do. Please give generously so the Museum doesn’t freeze or go bankrupt! Until we hear from you, we’ll be hanging in there!  -CL 

Sam and Dave Got Me Humming “I Thank You!”

A perspective from museum CEO Christopher Lee, September 2003

 So, what song lyric from “the soundtrack of our lives” would best characterize this last spring and summer?

“I get by with a little help from my friends?” How about, “Without love, where would you be right now?”

 I guess I finally figured out what George Boal had in mind when he presided over the Centre County meeting in 1852 that resulted in the founding of Penn State University. In the back of my mind, I always thought of the University as a massive, self-absorbed neighbor serving corporate-industrial interests and occasionally feeding elected officials at football circuses. 

In fact, a couple of years ago at a Chamber of Commerce reception, I approached Penn State Senior VP Gary Schultz, an old friend from Army National Guard service, and said, “Gary, can I talk to you like a brother?” Gary gave me a warm, brotherly look and nodded yes. I continued, “That is, can I criticize you and tell you what to do?”  He laughed at this view of brotherhood and listened on. 

“Penn State says it’s great,” I stated, “but Penn State will be great when it says who it serves.”  A couple of months later, there were billboards around the region saying “Penn State – Making Life Better.”  

“Nice concept,” I thought, “but is it more than just PR?” 

“I have just observed hundreds of dedicated Penn State volunteers do a huge, effective job helping the Museum...” 

Well, now I have to adjust my point of view, because I have just observed hundreds of dedicated Penn State volunteers do a huge, effective job helping the Museum empty out over thirty rooms in the Mansion for rewiring and then cleaning the rooms and everything we put back in. 

Some volunteers -- like Kate Mackay, Greg LaPlante, and Al Gary’s Theta Delta Chi group (see photo page 4) -- I found at the semi-annual Volunteer Fair on campus. Many others came from Lions Share, now known as the Service Learning program, led by staffer Beth Bradley with help from Dan Gregory and Sabrina Simo and from the “Fresh Start” program. 

The Boy Scouts from Our Lady of Victory church, familiar faces from the annual Memorial Day parking, and State High students like Brian Runt, Adam Pisoni, Matt Freiji and Ricky Gordon spent many hours moving, mopping and dusting. 

Emily Moser and Scott Miller of Tau Beta Pi provided 35 Penn State engineering students all at once. They wondered if we would have enough work for them…We were ready! We showed them rooms jammed full of paintings, antiques, rugs and tables, and invited them to put them back into empty, rewired rooms where they belonged according to photographs taken beforehand. 

For others, this may have been an overwhelming task. For the engineers, it was an exciting challenge. The engineers restored the rooms with only the photographs to guide them. What a tribute to Penn State engineering! 

Great ongoing helpers like docent Ruth Brigandi, educator Melinda Wilkins, and the enthusiastic volunteers of Gerald Russell’s United Way Day of Caring (see earlier newsletters for photos and stories) pitched in too. 

Even exterminator JC Ehrlich & Co. got into the act, donating many hours of time lugging trunks, sofas and tables out of the attic and back before fumigating the items in a tractor trailer outside the Carriage House. What an epic project!

Simply put, let me sing it with Sam and Dave: “I Thank You!”       -CL 

The CEO's Viewpoint:

"Hanging Together in a Harris Township Heyday"

A perspective from Museum CEO Christopher Lee, March 2003.

Some people say the seventies sucked, but they were a heyday for Boalsburg and Harris Township. I know this from looking through some of my old files from that time.

When the Rt. 322 bypass destroyed Oak Hall, the Boalsburg Village Conservancy was founded to protect the rest of Harris Township's heritage (look out SCCCTS!). Though only in my twenties, I had the honor to be on the Conservancy's founding board and serve as one of its early presidents.

The Conservancy then organized Memorial Day festivals to augment the traditional 6 PM service and took the lead in organizing Harris Township's American Bicentennial celebration in 1976.

Photo: Chris Lee reading the Declaration of Independence on the Boalsburg Diamond in 1976 in period clothing from Penn State's bicentennial opera Be Glad Then America.

The 1975 and 1978 Memorial Day festivals took place at the Boal Mansion, and the 1977 festival was a delightfully toned down community party - sort of an antidote for the exhaustive weeklong Bicentennial the year before -- on the village diamond with nothing but music and games for the township residents.

I chaired the Conservancy Committee which worked hard for two years to get the Harris Township Supervisors to rezone Boalsburg from Commercial (gas stations, coin-op Laundromats, etc.) to Village District to preserve its traditional and harmonious blend of commercial and residential uses and the safeguard the shape and placement of its buildings. Listing on the National Register of Historic Sites soon followed both for Boalsburg village (1977) and for the Boal Estate (1978).

Many people got to know their friends and neighbors and their community by participating in these events. This sense of mutual support and building community was the best part of that heyday.

I look forward to another heyday as Harris Township once again faces the threat of an interstate reshaping our land and communities. As Ben Franklin said at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, "We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately." -CL
 

I recently attended the Dance Marathon at the South Building of State College High School in February to cheer on my ninth grade daughter. As I was enjoying the music of a band of tenth graders, the lead singer suddenly looked right at me and said over the microphone, "Hey, I know you! You're the Boal Mansion guy! Your Boal Manson tour changed my life!"

I was a little stunned by his unexpected testimony and I didn't recognize the boy. Talking with him afterwards, I discovered that he was a member of the Youth Program of Leadership Centre County. Indeed, he had visited the Boal Mansion Museum last November and, according to him, the visit really had really changed his life.

"You look at things in a different way," he said about what the tour meant to him. "You inspired my not to be a slacker!" I was gratified to been seen as unique and to have helped produce such an engaging learning experience. I only wish more young people could experience this.

Now efforts are underway for me to present the Boal Mansion story to ninth and tenth grade classes in the area. I have a slide presentation on the American and international history of the Columbus Chapel and Boal Mansion Museum which students before have found quite engaging.

Ideally, these presentations also will make students aware of our summer docent program as we prepare for the busy season. Maybe together with the State College Area School District, we can change a few more lives. Isn't that our purpose? -- CL

The CEO's Viewpoint:

"I Come Here Not To Praise The Past, But To Bury It!"

A perspective from Museum CEO Christopher Lee. September 2002

(The following presentation was delivered by Christopher Lee to local historians and other attendees of the Centre County Historical Society History Exposition at the Centre Furnace Mansion on September 8, 2002.)

People of history, we've got it all wrong! I come here today not to praise the past, but to bury it. If we're trying to copy the past, let me ask you, what for? The surroundings have changed, and so we really can't copy the past.

And if we're trying to win the competition of "My history is better than your history," let me ask you, what's the prize? And who's paying attention to this competition, anyway?

Besides, the new science tells us that history does not repeat itself, so we're not fated to repeat its mistakes if we don't learn them. And what's wrong with living in the present? Or planning for the future -- what Penn State's Chris Clausen calls the "post-cultural" era.

OK, so if you can't copy history and it doesn't repeat itself, what is the value of our past? Where's the energy? Where's the life in it? Why is it important? What's the connection?

So, do I have you attention now? Good!

A year ago, our American spirit was tested. In that time of testing, it became very important to ask ourselves frankly, "Just what is our American spirit?"

I'm proud that the Columbus Chapel and Boal Mansion Museum has been answering that question for fifty years, since Ambassador Pierre Boal founded the 501 (c) 3 non-profit museum organization in 1952. We're here for the community, thanks to the support of the community.

The museum's mission is historic preservation, heritage education and community service. The Museum's tour program serves hundreds and thousands of children and adults every year, and our festivals and special events, such as the upcoming Boalsburg Century Ball, delight our guests.

(There followed a brief slide show tour of the Columbus Chapel and Boal Mansion Museum buildings and collection, including the following themes)

The story of the Boal family is the story of America as seen through one family. We will look at the values and the choices of eight generations who have shaped the community we live in today, from pioneer days to the present.

* Capt. David Boal fought in the Cumberland Militia during the Revolutionary War during which he protected central Pennsylvania,

* David Boal Jr. built a tavern in 1804. The village was named for him.

* Judge George Boal right here in the Centre Furnace Mansion in 1852 presided over the meeting of the Centre County Agricultural Society that petitioned the state to locate the Farmer's High School here, known today as Penn State University.

* Capt. John Boal led his own Union troop and died in action in 1865.

* Colonel Theodore Davis Boal changed the Boal farm to the Boal Estate, founded the Boalsburg Fire, Electric, Telephone, Water and Bus Companies, outfitted his own troop in 1916 for World War I and founded the 28th Division Shrine, now home of the Pennsylvania Military Museum.

* Mathilde de Lagarde Boal, wife of Theodore was a descendant of Christopher Columbus and inherited and imported to the Boal Estate the most important collection of Columbus family belongings in America, including the Admiral's Desk of Columbus himself and two piece of the True Cross on which Jesus died.

*Captain Pierre Boal was a pioneer aviator in World War I in 1916 and founded the Boal Mansion Museum just fifty years ago this year.

Well, you knew I wouldn't leave you in the lurch about the value of history, didn't you? To me, this collection is an incredibly intact record of our American identity, plus the unique Columbus connection. This sense of American identity energizes all who work and visit here. You can see it in the faces of students like the 10th grader who told me last spring, "Your Boal Mansion tour changed my life!"

Now, more than ever, it is important to preserve this collection and to continue to connect our people with their American identity. By doing so, we inform the very people who shape our American future.

And so I invite you to join us at the Boal Mansion Museum as a volunteer, a regular tourist or as a guest at a special event like the upcoming October 12, 2002, Boalsburg Century Ball. Thank you very much. -- CL

The CEO’s Viewpoint:  

INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION FOR

OUR COMMUNITY’S PROUD LIVING TRADITION

A perspective from museum CEO Christopher Lee, August 2001 

In April, BBC-TV of England called the Columbus Chapel “a glorious example of Old Europe in America” in a program broadcast throughout the United Kingdom. 

In May, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed a resolution calling the Columbus Chapel and Boal Mansion Museum a “a treasure and a valued historical marker in this Commonwealth” and noting that the museum has “preserved, protected and presented this heritage to the public for the past fifty years.” 

The community can be proud to be the home to this internationally-recognized, centuries-old, still vital tradition of community service, heritage education and historic preservation, which is still the museum’s mission today. 

The most important message contained in the Boal story, which is so representative of our American story through the centuries, is that we shape the culture that we live in. If our culture isn’t what we want, we can change it. We are creators of our culture, not powerless victims. 

So what is the state of the Boal Estate and our mission?  

Education: Hundreds of Penn State American Studies students will visit the museum again this fall as they inquire into “the American Dream.”  Hundreds of elementary school children from near and far continue to learn who we are as a community by observing the story of the Boals and their friends and neighbors shaping our community through the centuries.  Visitors to our community continue to be amazed at the rich history they encounter here. 

Preservation: the mansion is all painted, thanks to last year’s United Way Day of Caring and to the sustained effort of Dennis Lowe of the museum staff.  

Electrical upgrade: The Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development has granted the museum $30,000 for the electrical upgrade project, thanks to State Senator Jake Corman, who visited the museum last December and said he was “one of the 85% of visitors who find the museum to be more than they expected.”  His support continues the public/private partnership at the museum that has produced much public benefit for so little public expense for the last fifty years. 

We have now raised $60,000 of a the projected $100,000 needed to do the full job.  Can anyone step to the plate with a donation to help us bridge the final $40,000 gap? 

So, what’s next on the list of projects? It began with the Federal Museum Assessment in 1985 and a study done by Detroit architect John Hilberry in 1986.  Since then, we have “sealed the building envelopes” (insulation and storm windows) and installed security systems in both the mansion and the chapel. We have climate control in the chapel.  

Next comes climate control in the mansion and conservation of paintings and objects in the chapel. Immediate attention is needed for St. Francis and St. Jerome over the chapel altar. These 16^th century Spanish-Italian paintings are flaking and are close to being lost forever. The conservation won’t come easy. More than ten years ago, restoration of St. Jerome alone was estimated at $11,000 by the vice president of the American Institute of Conservators. 

Next, the crumbling roof of the 1789 pioneer cabin needs to be replaced and the foundation needs to be relocated beneath a wall it was meant to support. These are the priorities identified in the 1987 Architectural Conservation Plan by Philadelphia architect Dale Frens. 

Is there someone who needs to make a difference in the community and has the means to do it?  Now is the time and here is the place. Let’s roll up our sleeves and keep the ball rolling!  -CL

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The CEO’s Viewpoint: 

What business are you in?

A perspective from museum CEO Christopher Lee, March 2000

In the new movie The Cider House Rules, a foreman asks a worker during a fight, “What business are you in?” It’s the right question.  At the museum, we’re in the business of preserving a heritage to inspire our children, educate our citizens and give them a keener sense of who we are as a community.  We also bring community members together for extraordinary times at unique special events, like the May 6 musicale.  

Ask anybody who has been through the museum, and they will tell you the Boal Mansion Museum brings history to life.  The most common remark at the end of the tour is, “I had no idea of the wonderful, unusual things at the Boal Mansion Museum!”   

Something else is unusual here.  This benefit to the community is delivered by a small private non-profit at almost no expense to the public. The Boal family is still involved, as it has been for 211 years, but takes no yield from the place and in fact contributes much of their time, talent and treasure.  Years ago, the community might have considered such an endeavor as “not our business.” But these days, when public/private/community partnerships are much more common, everybody contributes what they do best, regardless of the boundaries, and together we efficiently deliver more benefit to the public. 

What can you do to advance this beneficial mission? Could you be a volunteer guide?  A donor?  A helper on an April Saturday to “clean up and fix up?”  It’s your strengths that keep the museum in this business of preserving our community’s heritage, inspiring our children and “wowing” our visitors!  Thanks for being in this business!  CL

The CEO’s Viewpoint: 

A perspective from museum CEO Christopher Lee, August 1999

A CEO’s point of view traditionally is about the bottom line, so here’s a little of that.  The museum is out of debt!  In less than two years the new Executive Team has erased the $15,000 debt left in 1997.  Since then visitor revenues went up 44% in 1998 and are up another 30% so far in 1999! 

This has helped museum improvements continue at an impressive pace.  Patching and painting are being done on the mansion and the gate house and the grounds have never looked better. 

The ballroom floor has been refinished to a golden glow and the exhibit rooms are full of interesting and well-displayed items from the collection. 

This showplace for community heritage and education did the community proud when BBC-TV filmed it for international broadcast.  

More remains to be done.  A community-minded company has offered to donate an HVAC system to protect the collection in the mansion if we can rewire the mansion, a $35,000 expense.  Also the 1789 cabin needs foundation and roof work for $22,000 to prevent further damage (see pg. 2).  

This situation is like 1991, when the museum couldn’t afford an $8,000 security system.  The next year burglars broke in and stole two paintings from the Columbus Chapel.  Now we have security systems.  Though it is too late to save the stolen paintings, there is still time to address the mansion’s electric wiring before something bad happens.   

Would you consider placing a major emphasis of your community support on this worthy historic site for the next couple of years? 

Thank you for your timely support on behalf of the many community members, adults and children who benefit from this historic site’s community service throughout the year! v