President’s Update

 Dear Friends,

I’ve been involved with the League for 15 years.  It all started one day when I was unwinding at home near the end of a lazy, restful vacation.  I felt very relaxed. Suddenly, the phone rang. It was Nancy Berlet, from the League nominating committee, and she asked me if I’d like to serve on the board.

If she’d called on a stressful work day, I would have offered a firm, “No thanks” and moved on.  But Nancy was too smart for that. She knew I was on vacation. She knew I’d feel relaxed. She was so nice. “Sure, why not?” It was out before I could stop myself and there was no reeling it back in.

And 15 years later, I’m still grateful to Nancy for calling while I was in the mood to say yes.   I wasn’t always grateful. League board service represents a lot of work. At first, League work seemed like one more thing to do in a long list of things to do. But over time, my feelings about it changed. 

The League has provided me with colleagues who have morphed into friends. It’s also exposed me to different ways of looking at the world of history and history organizations. That’s because League members are so varied. We always ask: who is the typical League member? But it’s a trick question. Because there is no such thing.

CLHO members can’t be pigeon-holed as volunteers or paid staff or historians or educators or curators or reenactors or students or archivists or board members or big museums or little museums or docents or museum teachers or hereditary groups or history buffs or people who love to create exhibits. They are all of those things and none of those things.  They are people who like history and want other people to like it, too. They are people who come to our workshops and read the Bulletin and compete for awards because they share one thing—a desire to answer the questions: How can we do things better? How can we help people like history more? How can we help people see the world in new ways?

That’s why I like being involved with the League. What could be better than spending time with people like that?  I hope you will do your best to spend more time with the League this year—come to programs, give Priscilla a call and get to know her and other members.

What you’ll find, if you haven’t already, is that CLHO is filled with people who are just like you, and not at all like you. We’re a League—a team of people who advocate for putting history into the hands and hearts of the public. And our team’s job is to figure out how to do it better together.

As President, Jen Eifrig brought people together to make sure we had lots of opportunities to excel. My intention is to pick up where she left off and keep moving forward—and I look forward to doing it with you.

Sally Whipple
President