Saving Galesburg's history a lonely job for curator

GALESBURG, Mich. (AP) - Sometimes it seems like nobody cares anymore.

Keith Martin sat inside the cozy space of the little Galesburg Historical Museum, where he's the curator. He was alone. There were no visitors, and it was unlikely any would be coming.

The landline rang now and then, but the call was never for the museum. The phone is actually an extension for the public library next door, and he's not supposed to answer it.

The 70-year-old sat at a table, writing. It was so quiet you could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall.

"You don't get a lot of people coming in," Martin admitted to the Detroit Free Press ( http://on.freep.com/1L4iIhw ). "People just aren't interested in history. Or maybe museums just aren't cool. I don't know."

The three-room museum is the repository of the small town's history and artifacts - its engraved cornerstones, its opened time capsules, its old mill wheel, the uniforms worn by its war heroes.

It's open only a few hours on a couple days a week, though Martin will come down and open the door just about any time for anyone who calls him with a request to be let in. He's friendly and knowledgeable, and can explain enthusiastically the significance of every single object in the museum.

Some days, he might get a few visitors. But there are also whole weeks when he gets none. Yet twice a week, right on time, he dutifully lights the red neon "Open" sign in the window with a yank on its cord, unlocks the door and waits in case someone out there shares his passion for the past.

He's here because he simply loves history. He loves to teach. And because nobody else will do it.

Most of the museum's founders and supporters have moved on or passed away over the years, and he's worried if nobody comes along soon to replace him, all these objects and photos and antiques he's worked so hard to save might vanish or get thrown out.

The clock is ticking in more ways than one.

"It's a little discouraging," he said. "But regardless, I'm saving it. If I don't save it, it won't be here for future generations."

Martin is the perfect caretaker for the museum. He was born and raised in the area, spent decades as a teacher at the town's elementary school, even married a teacher from another classroom.

For nearly half a century he was a school bus driver in the district, a job he volunteered for mostly because he's always loved the history of school buses.

He's been with the museum since it was started in 1992 by a handful of residents who thought the town had a past worth remembering and needed a place to showcase it.

Galesburg was founded in 1835. For years it was a tourist stop on old Michigan Avenue, which for a long time was the main route between Chicago and Detroit, and it was bustling like most of the towns along the way that had a steady flow of visitors forced to pass through.

Then came I-94 in the late 1950s, which bypassed the old route in favor of a much faster one that let travelers avoid the countless slowdowns and stoplights of the small towns along the way. After the tourists stopped coming, the towns stopped growing. About 2,000 people live in Galesburg now.

"Galesburg should have grown bigger than it did," Martin said. "It just never has."

When the museum opened, it had so few exhibits in its three small rooms that the Gilmore Car Museum in nearby Hickory Corners would loan the new museum some of its vintage cars so there'd be something to display.

But Martin's obsession with history soon helped fill the space.

When the Burgess Seed and Plant Co. left town after 65 years here, he raided their Dumpsters and took a bunch of their discarded antique typewriters, old catalogs and the metal scales used for measuring the weight of the flower seeds they'd ship to gardeners across the country. It's all now artfully arranged in a display at the museum.

The sight of someone trashing their history drove him nuts.

"I couldn't stand it," Martin said. "It was horrible because a lot of it was good stuff. But nobody had a use for it anymore."

When the old City Hall got torn down, Martin strolled into the wreckage to take pictures of the graceful brick patterns of the underground cistern.

"Look at all that beautiful brickwork," he said, showing off a photo display. "That was our water system. Now it's all gone."

And when the old mill burned down, he found its big wood wheels for sale online, bid on them, brought them home and put them in the museum, which was founded through donations but is funded by the city and furnished largely by one man's determination.

"We think it's a pretty nice museum for a small town," he said, under the steady gaze of several mannequins dressed in period clothing. "We're really quite proud of it, and my biggest goal, whether I get lots of people in or not, is I've got to save history. I've got to save everything."

There's an exhibit for the town's old Lions Club by the door, a cabinet that holds memorabilia from the community service group like pins and hats and ashtrays.

The Lions were a big part of Galesburg's history and left many marks here, from the softball diamond and tennis courts they built, to the eyeglasses they provided every year for free to kids in town.

But one day they just folded, when they reached a point where too many older members had died and not enough new volunteers had come along to replace them.

"We couldn't get any younger people involved in it," said Kay Maxson, a longtime member of the Lions, who's still the treasurer of the museum, and was a longtime Boy Scouts treasurer, too.

He's the owner of Kay Maxson Agency in the center of Galesburg, located inside an old building from which he has sold insurance for years, like his father-in-law before him, like his daughter does now, not far from where his grandfather's blacksmith shop once stood. His family's history is woven through the town, and he was a major force in creating the museum.

The 81-year-old said the same factors that brought the Lions' demise are still having an effect on the whole town.

"We're having trouble not just with the museum," he said, "but also Scouting and a lot of other things. Younger people are either too busy with kids and schools and so forth, or they just don't want to volunteer that much time in anything."

"We try and keep it open, but you can only go so far," Maxson added. "If it wasn't for Keith, the museum probably wouldn't be there."

Martin said he sees the same cultural shift, and it worries him.

"It used to be everybody was involved with everything, and now the generations aren't interested in doing anything to help," he said. "We don't have a Lions Club anymore, we don't have any of those organizations that Galesburg had. They're all gone. There's no one to take the place when all the old people die. There's just no one who wants to do anything."

A meeting was about to be held. Trouble is, nobody had showed up.

The museum board's monthly meeting was scheduled to start at 5 p.m., but Martin was the only one there.

The business at hand was simple and routine - approval of the last meeting's minutes, payment of the monthly light and gas bills, and the acceptance of the donation of a straight razor, a shoehorn and a sailor hat from a local couple. But he needed a quorum of three to do any official business, and he was having a hard time getting even those few.

One board member had just been admitted to a nursing home. Another was out of town. One member, a city councilman, said he'd attend, so Martin held out hope that another member, an elderly woman who wasn't feeling well that night, would find a way to come and give them the three they needed to get anything done.

Besides voting on the usual housekeeping items of a nonprofit museum, Martin was excited to report to board members that a DVD of the lecture series he began giving last year at City Hall was selling astonishingly well. Somehow, contrary to attendance at the museum, these lectures have drawn dozens of people. "It's almost considered a miracle," he said.

Among the crowds at the lectures are some of Martin's former students who've come years later to hear him explain history once again.

"I actually had a few of my kids show up to my lectures, and they're now in their 30s and 40s, and they said, 'We never thought we'd be in your classroom again.' But there they are," he said proudly.

The phone in his pocket rang. "Hello?" It was the woman on the board who wasn't feeling well. There was a long pause as he listened.

"That's OK," he told her after she confirmed her absence and apologized.

He sat back down at the table, surrounded by the shelves he built himself and the objects he gathered, and went back to writing another history lecture for those few people who, like him, want to know where they and their hometown came from. Behind him, the clock on the wall ticked away the time.

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Information from: Detroit Free Press, http://www.freep.com