Preserving the Past by Pat Mulso

Plan to join us for the 30th annual Eddie Cochran weekend celebration. The weekend will begin at 6 p.m. June 10 with a cruise in at the Country Inn & Suites. The event is sponsored by Green Mill, Country Inn & Suites and Motor Inn. Registration will be $1. There will be live music by Richie Lee, the museum’s famous root beer floats, food available by Green Mill and Denny Brue and 12 awards will be given away that evening by the sponsors.

The 30th annual Eddie Cochran weekend car show and cruise will be June 11. Registration is $10 and is from 8 to 11:30 a.m. The car show will be downtown again this year on North Broadway with a free shuttle to and from the museum. The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. both that Friday and Saturday. The car show is free for spectators and the museum has reduced admission for the day. We have added more awards this year for the 30th anniversary.  There will be special presentations at the museum telling Eddie Cochran’s life story at approximately 11 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. by Roger Wessels and a special visit by Sheryl Isaacson, whose late boyfriend, David Shriver, was Eddie Cochran’s bass player the last couple years of Cochran’s life. Awards will be given out at approximately 2 p.m. and the cruise will begin from the fairgrounds around 4 p.m. Line up starts at 2:30 p.m. Watch for the cruise route in the paper closer to the event and it will be posted or available at the time of registration.

We have a special treat for you in the evening at Fountain Lake Park. The Whitesidewalls will perform for the evening. Beverages and refreshments will be available throughout the evening and this event is free to the public — though your donations will be appreciated to help cover the expenses of this great band. We hope you will join us as we enjoy and celebrate the music of Eddie Cochran and his era of time.

The museum will host a four-hour AARP defensive driving refresher class from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. June 16. The cost is $20 for AARP members or $25 for non-members, which includes the class materials and administrative fee. You must pre-register for the class and will need your driver’s license to do so. The refresher course is needed every three years after the initial eight-hour class is taken to continue receiving a discount on your auto insurance. Call or stop by the museum to register during our regular business hours. You will receive your certificate at the end of the class. Each month the museum hosts a refresher class, watch for future dates in the museum newsletters and in our Tribune columns.

The museum is currently working on two grant projects. One will provide static and movable shelving in our new archive room, along with the proper permanent storage files and boxes for our paper archives and our object collections. This is a grant through the Minnesota Historical Society Legacy Grant Program. This project will also give us the opportunity to index and catalog items as they are boxed and moved to their new location in the museum. The other grant is a collaborative grant with the city of Albert Lea through a SELCO Community Collaboration Grant that will provide a scanner and the ability to scan, preserve and store historic city records. Both of these grants are funded in part or in whole with money from Minnesota’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

The museum will be closed Saturday. We wish everyone a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend.

 

Pat Mulso is the interim executive director of the Freeborn County Historical Museum, Library and Village, 1031 Bridge Ave.