Volunteer Tackles Task Of Fund Raising
While Joy Anna O’Donnell was plunging into a new research project at the Bonner County Museum this week, she heard someone call out her name.
“This is for you,” said a delivery person who handed her a bouquet of fresh carnations and a note of appreciation from a man in Sacramento, Calif. She had never met the man. James Kearns Todd, a retired state tax administrator, sent the flowers because of O’Donnell’s efforts in finding information about his grandfather, once a Bonner County sheriff.
“One day about a year ago I just got to thinking about my grandfather,” Todd said. “My job was political; so was his. I was curious about his career.” After sending letters of inquiry to agencies around Sandpoint and receiving no answers, Todd finally heard from O’Donnell in early June. During the next few weeks, she pored over pages of local papers from the early 1900s and eventually found five clippings that satisfied Todd’s curiosity about his grandfather. “He was my favorite relative,” Todd said. “I never really knew the details of his time as sheriff.” Thanks to O’Donnell, Todd learned that his grandfather served one term from 1910-1914 after a landslide election. Kearns later took his family to Portland because he “wanted his kids to get a Catholic education.”
“I was really grateful that she answered the letter and found the information,” Todd said. O’Donnell, a retired Sandpoint High English teacher - fondly known by colleagues as “Mother Superior” - first visited the museum as a potential volunteer in May. She shows up daily now, spending hours reading old papers, sorting through museum files and calling oldtimers to find information for letter writers from throughout the United States. Most write for information about relatives or local history.
O’Donnell loves the challenge as she laps up Sandpoint’s colorful past.
“What this place was like is hard to express,” she says of the early 1900s. “Talk about today being violent. This place was mayhem … horrible accidents in the woods, people run over by trains or run out of town. It’s always been a place where things happen.
“The big thing was suicides,” she added. “Their favorite method was to go to Spokane and jump out of a tall building; the other was to drink carbolic acid.”
O’Donnell has temporarily put historical research aside to help other museum volunteers ensure a positive future for her newfound haven of joy. The museum faces a hefty county budget cut next year.
So she’s tackling the challenge of getting 600-plus tickets sold for a Sept. 9 stage show at the Panida Theater honoring World War II veterans, including those attending the annual Farragut Naval Training Station reunion. The Bonner County Historical Society is sponsoring “Sentimental Journey,” an evening of nostalgic musical entertainment, produced by events coordinator Jean Peck.
O’Donnell this week launched her “plan of attack” for selling the $6 tickets. Her strategy includes asking museum board members to do their fair share, dropping off books at the Elks Club where local service groups meet for lunch and even enlisting friends to sell.
Her motive for fund raising is simple. She wants museum doors to stay open so she can continue to do research. “It is so vital to this county to have a record of its heritage,” she said. “This place was alive. It was a boomtown, and the museum is a repository where you get that original information. It’s not like out of a history book, but you’re looking at the original. I find it exciting.”
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