By Sue Moore
If you have never visited the Vicksburg Historical Society’s Depot museum or any of the other buildings in the Historic Village, you are like a lot of people in this area, say Lee and Ken Evensen.
“It may seem like keeping all these old relics of history around would be depressing,” she relates, “but anytime I have an extra few minutes during my shift, I love to dig deeper into the archives and find out so many interesting tidbits about Vicksburg. It’s very exciting to be a part of keeping these records so that the public can come and see them or do research here. We have so much to offer in the displays of artifacts and written material about past generations.”
Because of this devotion and the many hours of work that Lee has put in over the years, she and her husband Ken, have been chosen as the first “volunteers of the month”, for 2008.
According to Maggie Snyder, a long-time Historical Society volunteer, “Lee and Ken have contributed countless hours helping with collection management, seeing that the Depot remains in tip top order, and the other buildings in the village in good repair.
“Ken has become the “go to” guy for nearly all of the maintenance and upkeep of the Historic Village. He heads up a crew of men who call themselves the “Thursday Guys”. They take care of both big and little jobs, saving the Village of Vicksburg, who owns the buildings, considerable money every year,” Snyder declared.
Some of his helpers include Ernie Cox, Tim Moore, Arden Sult, and Ron Smith who show up on Thursday to get their assignments and even take home work to do if special tools are needed to rebuild something in particular.
Both of the Evensens serve as greeters for those individuals and groups that want to tour the Village buildings and Lee spends lots of hours working the phones to line up other volunteers who serve as greeters on the Saturdays from May through December when the Depot is open to the public from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. These volunteers often include Judy Glover, Sharon Shelton, Linda Brenton, Mary Ann Kudary, Bonnie Holmes and Barbara Cousins, as wellasmany more who give of their time and energyon a regular basis.
In 2007 the Depot museum was open 170 hours on 34 days and had 298 volunteer greeter hours put in by over 30 local area people, according to Lee Evensen. She is very grateful to the many volunteers that she works with. “The Evensens’ selection as “Volunteers of the Month” will come as a complete surprise to both of them”, Snyder concluded. They just give so freely of their timewithout thinking about personal recognition.