Surratt House Museum 40th Birthday

[L Verge]

Thanks for the plug, Thomas. Since I was part of the first group of volunteers to train as guides beginning in September of 1975, I was reminiscing the other day. What memories!

I have often told people that our first group was composed of about twenty bored housewives, but what a job we and ensuing others have done (with no training in how to run a museum). A now-deceased male member once referred to us as a bunch of Girl Scouts. One of our "Girl Scouts" drew herself up to full 75-year-old stature and replied, "And we Girl Scouts have sure sold a lot of cookies to get where we are!" The retired lieutenant colonel shut up after that...

The best part of it all - and the most humbling - is the wealth of learned people that I have met as first a volunteer and, for the past 33 years, as director of the museum. I never thought back in the 1960s that I would turn my avocation into my vocation.

Someday, I should write a book, but it won't be on Mary Surratt, Wilkes Booth, or the Lincoln assassination. It will be on dealing with people along the roads that you take in life. Expect at least two volumes.