Update on the Fire at the Gulfport History Museum – Here’s how to help, City of Gulfport, Fl, Boca Ciega Bay
It feels like it’s been a lifetime since we had the opening reception for Read All About It: 50 Years of Hyperlocal News.
That exhibit was an exciting time for the Gulfport Historical Society, because it represented a new chapter in how we worked with the community to share our history. I was over-the-moon excited about so many facets of the exhibit, and the Gabber shared some of their artifacts — the original phone from the newspaper, photographs never before seen by anyone outside the newspaper staff and other one-of-a-kind items that you’d only be able to see at the Gulfport History Museum.
The owners of the Gabber put their trust in us to keep those items safe. Two weeks after that exhibit opened, I had to tell the owners of the paper their items had significant smoke damage. They’ve been gracious and supportive, and I — along with the rest of the board of directors — cannot thank them enough for that, and their support.
Fortunately, insurance is covering the cost of repairing those artifacts. It’s also covering replacing our porch, our floor and restoring all the documents damaged by soot and fire.
It will not cover the cost of archiving and digitizing our town’s records — tax rolls, original maps, photographs, and other historical records.
Like The Gabber, Gulfport’s families, residents, government and community have placed their trust in us. They — you — trust us to keep your history and memories safe.
Since the Labor Day Fire, this thought has hung over me like a dark cloud.
What if there hadn’t been a meeting next door and no one had called 911 right away?
What if a tree had fallen on the museum during Hurricane Irma, like it did to this museum during Hurricane Michael?
What if Hurricane Michael had hit us instead?
What if the next hurricane does hit us?
In every one of those scenarios, the Gulfport Historical Society would lose most — if not all — of our town’s history. And what has weighed on my mind so heavily is that we might not be so lucky next time.
I’m not willing to gamble with our town’s heritage. What we have in Gulfport — what we’ve built since the Barnetts made landfall at Barnett’s Bluff towards the end of the Civil War — is far too special to risk. As the head of the Gulfport Historical Society, our community has trusted me to make sure I do everything I can to minimize the risk of losing everything that makes Gulfport special.
As we’ve mentioned in the days following the Labor Day Fire, we need funding to digitize the collection. That includes proper archival processes (to retard decay) in addition to unbinding books, scanning and re-binding books. It’s not a simple matter of getting a scanner and saving the items to the cloud (oh, how I wish it were). The handling of the records themselves require specific protocols.
Many of you have already been quite generous with your donations, and we thank you — I thank you — for that. But we still need more money; digitization is expensive. It will be worth it; once complete, people anywhere in the world will be able to search through our records and photographs. And — most importantly — those records and photographs will be safe from fire, hurricanes or random acts of disaster.
We need your help. Here’s how you can help protect our community’s heritage:
1. Donate. Whatever you can. Even $5 helps. You can also donate at the Gulfport Beach Bazaar.
2. Make monthly donations — easily. We can debit your checking account or credit card for any amount you choose, from $5 to $100.
3. Pre-order a commemorative Labor Day Fire t-shirt or postcard. Local artist Steve Smith based his design on a screenshot from a video taken of the fire.
4. Visit the Gulfport Beach Bazaar and buy something from the our Square Mullet Gift Shop. We have books by local authors, coffee mugs, portable dog bowls, and a myriad of other items.
5. Become a member. We have membership levels for every budget, and you can pay for your membership over the course of one year. While the cost of your membership isn’t tax-deductible, it does come with lots of other benefits.
6. Become a business member. Benefits include newsletter advertising and other perks.
7. Volunteer with us. We need volunteers at our events — we need people who can get comfortable using the Square for our booth at Holiday Hoopla, we need people we can train as tour guides and we need people to check in folks at our twice-monthly original walking tours. If you can help with any or all of these things, you can sign up here. If you’d like to be a tour guide, please reach out to Cathy Salustri via email.
Whatever you choose to do, thank you for your support, your kind words when we pass on the street, and for being a part of our amazing, resilient, historical community.
Cathy
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