Last Sunday at the Lucerne Alpine Senior Center, a packed audience, actually, standing room only, of Lake County Historical Society members and guests heard a fascinating talk on Captain Floyd and the birth of Kono Tayee by Phil Smoley, history buff and owner of CPS Country Air Properties. As has become customary, enthusiastic discussions followed Phil Smoley”s presentation.
In addition to speaker Smoley, we are grateful to Mildred Pickersgill, Florence Peck, Kevin Engle, Thelma Dangel, Patricia England, Vi Smoley and Dolores Nutt for their help to make it all work smoothly. Special thanks go to Past President Tony Marchese and First Vice President Michael Anderson, who organized and chaired the meeting on short notice. President Ridgel, and Corresponding Secretary Jackie Ridgel contributed only complaints via cell phone; they were stranded in a snow storm near Tahoe. Thanks also to all the members and guests who brought a mountain of delicious cakes and cookies to share.
Jean Beeson and Vi Smoley sold a record number of historical books while Floraine Chalk and Bonnie Skee reported record sales of Opportunity contributions to pay Historical Society expenses.
The enormous success of this meeting is indicative of a happy problem: A few years ago we could have held our meetings in a closet. Now the Historical Society has grown to be the largest organization in Lake County, other than the county government, and we must rethink where we can meet. All this success brings the need for rethinking our organization, which we are doing in a series of brainstorming meetings.
Starting from a shed in a back yard we now are involved in digitizing our photographs and artifacts (Pat Brown), building a Web site, www.lakecountyhistory.org (Mireya Turner); copywriting and trademarks, preparing for virtual tours, including county historical sites (George Stimson); publishing a hugely successful periodical, “Pomo Bulletin” (Michael Anderson); restoring the Herndon-Copsey Cemetery (Kevin Engle), preparing to open and operate the Ely Stage Station & Country Museum ( Greg Dills), moving to larger quarters in Nice (Mike Weedon), awarding annual college or trade school scholarships (Mireya Turner), and distributing Lake County historical books (Jean Beeson).
We are obviously a cheerful organization who has fun in our dedication to Lake County History. We invite you to volunteer to be one of our worker-managers. Right now we are selling $10 and $100 fifty-fifty drawing tickets to help support the Ely Stage Station project. I have sold a $100 ticket to our granddaughters” college fund and another one to Bill Brunetti. Either can win $10,000. We need more sales! (Yes, it”s all legal) Call 279 4062 and I will sign you up.
Randy Ridgel, President
Lake County Historical Society
