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December 8, 2010 -- Special message to Friends
members from Superintendent Kate Hammond that appeared in our October 2009
newsletter.
Dear Friends-
Having arrived in the dead of January, it was a joy
to see the park come alive this spring. In March I had the wonderful opportunity
to have a face-to- face meeting with the Friends Board, thanks to their
willingness to venture up to Montana before things got too crazy at the park
with the busy visitor season. I really appreciated the chance to get to know
many of the board members, to learn more about the history of the Friends group,
and to start talking with the board about their ideas for how the park and the
Friends group can work even more closely together in the future. The message
that I heard loud and clear was that Friends is here to help and they want to
support the monument in any way that they can. I have regular phone calls with
Bob Reece, and I could not ask for a more supportive, kind and dedicated board
President - he is a joy to work with. This park is so lucky to have such a
wonderful, supportive Friends group. At that very board meeting, Friends
approved several important projects for the park including purchasing materials
to improve our curatorial storage, supporting a Teacher Ranger Teacher (Tom
Smith) and purchasing replacement batteries for the Historian's electric cart.
As the weather warmed, school groups began arriving (April and May) and our
summer seasonal staff began to arrive. It was a joy to finally meet the many
dedicated staff who loyally return every summer to work at Little Bighorn, and
to see some new faces of seasonals who were spending their first summer here. My
first anniversary also brought the opportunity to meet some of the Friends'
membership, including many who graciously donated their time and energy to
provide roving interpretation on the battlefield trails over anniversary
weekend. Over the course of the weekend, and particularly at the Friends feast
on Saturday evening, I had the chance to sit down and visit with many of you.
Your passion and enthusiasm for the battlefield is inspiring, as is your can-do
attitude. Thank you for all that you do! As I mentioned at the Friends feast, we
welcome any of you to come volunteer at the battlefield. We generally ask for a
commitment of at least a month; housing may be available if you come between
fall and spring. Contact Ken Woody if you are interested.
One of many special projects that we did this summer was to convene a review of
our cultural resources program at Little Bighorn. In June, we hosted a
several-day visit by many of the program leaders from our NPS regional office to
discuss activities and needs at the battlefield related to archeology, history,
cultural landscapes, ethnography, curation, etc. It was a very beneficial
exercise, and generated a list of potential projects that would help us better
manage and protect our cultural resources. One of the priorities that surfaced
was completion of an Archeological Overview and Assessment, which is a document
that synthesizes the archeological work that has been done at the battlefield in
the past and what the results were, and provides a list of recommended
projects/needs for archeology at the battlefield in the future. This will allow
us to take a more comprehensive, proactive approach to archeology, and allow us
to identify some priorities and then seek funding to accomplish them.
Archeologist Doug Scott has begun a draft of such a document prior to his
retirement from full-time NPS work, but was not able to finish it.
I had hoped that we might be able to cobble together funding to complete the
Archeological Overview and Assessment by requesting some seed money from Friends
and then leveraging that to apply for some grants. Much to my surprise, when I
approached Bob Reece with the idea, he was not only enthusiastic, but suggested
that he contact the board about funding the whole project. Holy cow! Within a
week, I had an email back from Bob saying Friends had agreed to fund the
completion of the
Archeological Overview and Assessment and when did I want the check? If only
all funding requests in the government were that positive and that timely!
I wanted to pass on my sincere thanks to all Friends members for your support of
this important project, which will give us tools that we need to more
effectively and proactively manage archeological research and archeological
resources at Little Bighorn Battlefield.
Hope to see you all at the battlefield soon!
Regards,
Kate
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