Joining is More than About Membership

Last month, I re-joined the Spady Cultural Heritage Museum. My company, Kaliah Communications, Inc., is a corporate member. But I didn’t join just because The Spady is my client.

I joined because if we don’t support our cultural organizations, who will? And by “we,” I mean everyone.

For the longest time, I thought it was always someone else’s responsibility to attend openings, give money, lend a hand, volunteer… When you’re in your 20s and 30s, there is always something else demanding your money and time. But as I get older, I have a bit more time to visit museums, historical societies, gardens, parks and other places that we think will always be there.

In 1996, my husband and I were married in the African-American Art Museum in Tampa, Florida. It was a non-descript building in downtown; but inside, it was lovely. Rooms of dark wood walls and well-kept carpet, lined with paintings and artwork of black artists. It had two floors and a gift shoppe. We welcomed about 75 people on a rainy Saturday to our ceremony.

That museum closed long ago.

I joined the Spady again because it shouldn’t be closed in 14 years. It should be open and vibrant and welcoming to people of all generations and cultures. It should host musical acts in its amphitheatre and children’s performers in its Clubhouse. Traveling exhibits should be hanging on both floors, and its staff should be working away in dedicated office space. It should be a center of activity, art, education, and community support.  It should be around for a long time for couples to be married in and for them to come back to visit.

The Spady’s levels of membership are affordable and varied. Click here to see the levels and to join.

Make it a New Year’s Resolution to support it because if you don’t, really, who will?

Not Like Any Other Museum…The Spady

The ladies who work at the Spady seem to be busier than most.  OK,  I’m biased.

I’ve worked with them for years, know them personally and like them all. But I’ve also been to other museums, both here in Palm Beach County and in other cities. I’ve been to the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. I’ve toured the remains of Eygptian mummies in Cairo, walked ancient universities of Kemet and taken in the awesome nature of spaceships at the NASA Kennedy Space Center. Yes, I like museums.

But I’ve never walked into a museum and had someone take me on a personal tour, talk to me about what I was looking at and invited me back like we were friends. That’s what the Spady ladies do.

Since their space is so intimate (code word for small), if someone doesn’t take the time to point out the special details of each piece, you might miss them.  You might mistakenly think, “This is all?” But with one of the Spady ladies showing you around, you realize you are standing in an historical artifact of a cultural leader’s home, reinvented into a space for artwork that is sometimes overlooked.

Like the quilts that are on display now until the end of the year. Recently, a group of quilters stopped by, and staff stopped what they were doing to give a personal tour. The paperwork and meetings and e-mails and everything else halted until the visitors received the full brunt of hometown charm and attention. I think that’s why the Spady ladies seem busier than most.

They are.

Remembering Hattie Ruth Pompey, founding member of EPOCH, Inc.

I met Ms. Hattie Ruth Pompey as part of a work assignment. As a communications consultant for the School District of Palm Beach County in 2001-2002, I was charged with getting her  late husband’s manuscript, “More Rivers to Cross,” properly published and distributed into school libraries.

She would only talk with me in person, and I had to go to her home. It was like sitting with my grandmother; only in real life, I wasn’t that close to either of my actual grandmothers. So I treated her as I would have treated a “fill-in” grandma, whom I actually knew and adored.

She welcomed in a relative stranger with only a recommendation that I was worth the job. It was a hefty tome Mr. Spencer Pompey had left behind, full of his work and memories bringing this county’s race relations into the modern age. Ms. Pompey was relieved that a real person had been assigned to usher his work into permanency, and I felt honored for the task.

“More River to Cross” took my meeting with Ms. Pompey several times, making trips between her home, the School District’s offices, and the publisher in Lake Worth, relaying her wishes, keeping her abreast of progress and setbacks. I didn’t write anything or edit a word. I just made sure the book was done.

And from that was born a friendship that resulted in me being scolded every time I saw her afterward. “When are you going to bring your boys to come meet me?” She asked me without fail or hesitation. I would make my promises, hug her, take in her graceful beauty (she was very pretty), and wait until the next time…

There will be no more next times for me and Ms. Pompey, a founding member of Expanding & Preserving Our Cultural Heritage (EPOCH), Inc., the organization that made the Spady Cultural Heritage Museum possible.

I’m blessed to have known her, sat in her kitchen and managed a project so dear to her heart.  It was my privilege and honor.

Ms. Hattie Ruth Pompey

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