- Dates
- 1988-07-18 – 1988-07-23
- Kind
- Celebration
- Where
- Mormon Print Shop
- Participants
- Shirley Gladish (director) · Ray Denny (organizer) · Claudia Schmidt (musician)
- Carried out by
- Beaver Island Historical Society
- Followed by
- Beaver Island Museum Week, 1989
- Eras
- Modern era
- Concepts
- celebrationcommunityheritageexhibition
- Within
- Beaver Island
Summary
The 1988 Beaver Island Historical Society’s Museum Week, called the “9th Annual” in the June Beacon, ran July 18–23 and centered on the 150th anniversary of Protar’s birth. It is the most fully documented edition in the 1980s held record: the August Beacon carries a multi-page, day-by-day recap naming dozens of organizers, performers, house-tour hosts, artists and lecturers, and describing several programs, including a reptile show, a house-and-garden tour, and an archaeology lecture on the island’s stone arrangements, in enough narrative detail to stand as independent records of those subjects in their own right.
Program
Organized by Ann Broder, Floss Frank, and Museum Director Shirley Gladish, with the announced program placing special emphasis on the Protar sesquicentennial and on children’s activities. Monday opened with Central Michigan University Biological Station director Dr. Jim Gillingham’s Live Reptile Show at the Community School gym, drawing roughly 250 people, half of them adults, around animals including a side-neck turtle, a blue-tongued skink, an American alligator, and a Burmese python. That evening followed Music on the Porch of the Print Shop Museum, organized by Marilyn Reed and Doris Larson, with a long roster of performers including young singers Martha Guth (11) and Judy Holst (8), Tammy McDonough, Joe Moore, Brian Baker, the Sweet Adelines under Nancy Sommers, and Claudia Schmidt performing with Joddy Crosswhite.
Tuesday brought a reptile-and-amphibian field trip for more than fifty children, led again by Gillingham, and an adult house-and-garden tour with substantial narrative description of three homes: the William J. Gallagher Jr. and Mary Duffy house, restored that spring from an 1858 structure that had once boarded the Dominican Sisters and housed their first chapel on the island; the Siudara home, built in 1946 by Fred Spaulding of the King Strang Hotel and later owned by Dr. Joe and Rhea Christie before the Siudaras bought it in 1980; and the Arden/Lidwig home, completed in 1986 from island-milled cedar. The tour also visited Lois Williams’ and Mary Scholl’s gardens, the latter on a property formerly owned by Mary Ellen Gallagher. That evening, Terri Bussey lectured on her archaeological research, describing, in the reporter’s paraphrase, a personal project beginning around 1985 that led her to identify a stone arrangement on the island as deliberately placed, aligned to the North Star, rather than glacially scattered; the Historical Society was, per the recap, seeking funding for a proper study. This record treats the lecture only as a description of what was presented, not as an independent verification of the underlying claim.
Wednesday opened Protar’s Home for visitors and filled the school gym with the Art Show, drawing roughly twenty named local artists working in baskets, driftwood art, wood sculpture, stained glass, watercolor, oil, pastel, charcoal, photography, pen and ink, rugs, quilting, and pottery, including Ray Denny in wood sculpture and Shirley Gladish among the watercolorists, alongside a Children’s Treasure Hunt at the Print Shop Museum and Ramon Nelson’s first of two talks on his childhood on High Island as a member of the House of David. That night Gillingham returned to lecture on “Reptile Love and War Down Under: Mating Behavior of New Zealand’s Tuatara,” describing his invitation to help research the then-endangered species in New Zealand.
Thursday held the Pet Show at the Print Shop, organized by Liz and Paul Niehaus and Doris and Lars Larson, drawing about 120 children and parents with pets photographed in the museum’s mock jail cell, and an evening lecture, “Lighthouses of the Great Lakes & Beaver Island,” by Mike Van Hoey. Friday offered children’s Art Project Workshops (acting taught by Josh Broder, sketching at the Print Shop), Ramon Nelson’s second High Island talk, and a Protar-anniversary lecture by Antje Price recounting his European family background. Saturday closed the week with art demonstrations organized by Ray and Ruth Denny (pottery thrown by Harold Hart, glass-prism work by Ellen Hill, miniature baskets by Debra Van Linden Blair, and nail sculpture by Denny himself), an art-object raffle, and a square dance for about fifty people with music by Glen and Starr Hendrix and caller John Freeman of Ann Arbor.
Significance
Museum Week was the Historical Society’s principal annual public program, and the 1988 edition’s scale (five lectures, a juried-style art show filling the school gym, a multi-home house tour, and children’s programming running every day of the week) reflects an institution operating at full capacity around a milestone anniversary. The Society’s own September 1988 annual-meeting minutes record that the week “went very smoothly” and that Protar t-shirts and the newly available Volume III of the Journal of Beaver Island History both sold well, tying the week’s public programming to the Society’s ongoing publishing and fundraising work. Terri Bussey’s archaeology lecture is also the earliest located account of the research that led toward the 1988 stone-circle discovery.
Evidence and limits
The recap is a multi-page serialized account carried across several issue pages (“con’t pg 3,” “cont pg 5,” “Con’t pg 6”); it reads as a first-hand description of what the reporter witnessed and heard, not an official Society program document, so details such as exact attendance figures (beyond the reptile show’s roughly 250 and the pet show’s roughly 120) and the precise wording of lecture content are the reporter’s own record rather than a tallied one. Terri Bussey’s account of her archaeological research, as reported, is treated here strictly as a description of her lecture, not as this record’s independent finding about the stone arrangement itself. Antje Price’s Protar-family genealogy, given at length in the Friday lecture recap, is not repeated here in full; a fuller Protar biography is the more appropriate place for it.
Open questions
- Is the “9th Annual” count in 1988 consistent with the Society’s own 1980 “experimental Museum Week” language (which would make 1988 the 9th year counting 1980 as year one)? It is consistent, but no single source states the reconciliation explicitly; see the hub’s Origins section.
- Does any Historical Society program document or attendance tally survive independent of the Beacon’s own reporter’s account?
See also
Sources
- Announces Museum Week, July 18-23, themed to Protar's sesquicentennial birth year, with house tours, lectures, a children's program, an art show, and music on the porch; special t-shirts to be sold and Volume III of the Journal of Beaver Island History to be available by then. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1988-05_Beaver-Beacon
- The held nineteen-page May issue PDF is paired with the canonical OCR source and confirms the Museum Week announcement.data1 · beaver-island-archive · scans · beaver_beacon · issues · 1988-05_Beaver-Beacon
- Calls it the "9th Annual Museum Week July 18 to July 23," celebrating "the 150th anniversary of the birth of Protar," with a day-by-day list beginning Monday's live reptile show and Music on the Porch. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1988-06_Beaver-Beacon
- The held twenty-page June issue PDF is paired with the canonical OCR source and confirms the Museum Week schedule.data1 · beaver-island-archive · scans · beaver_beacon · issues · 1988-06_Beaver-Beacon
- A serialized recap spanning several pages of the issue ("con't pg 3," "cont pg 5," "Con't pg 6"). Names organizers Ann Broder, Floss Frank and Museum Director Shirley Gladish, with special emphasis on Protar's 150th birth year and children's activities. Monday: Dr. Jim Gillingham (Central Michigan University Biological Station Director)'s Live Reptile Show at the Community School gym, drawing about 250 people, half of them adults, with named animals (a side-neck turtle, a blue-tongued skink, an American alligator, Texas and California king snakes, a Burmese python); and Music on the Porch of the Print Shop Museum, organized by Marilyn Reed and Doris Larson, naming performers Martha Guth (11) and Judy Holst (8), Tammy McDonough, Joe Moore, Brian Baker, the Sweet Adelines (Annie Heyhoe, Harriet Rafferty, Fran Teeter, Joyce Runberg, Alex Siudara, Vera Timsak, Shannon Heynig, Lil Gregg, Kathy Speck, directed by Nancy Sommers), Laurie Gillingham, Leslie Meyer, Brent Graves, Glen Swier, Len Reitsma, Terri Bussey, and Joddy Crosswhite and Claudia Schmidt. Tuesday: a reptile/amphibian field trip for 50-plus children led by Gillingham, and an adult house-and-garden tour with detailed narrative descriptions of the William J. Gallagher Jr./Mary Duffy house (restored 1988; built 1858; formerly a Dominican Sisters boarding house and chapel; hosted by granddaughter Kay Masini), the Siudara home (built 1946 by Fred Spaulding of the King Strang Hotel; later owned by Dr. Joe and Rhea Christie from 1969 and the Siudaras from 1980), and the Arden/Lidwig home (built and completed 1986, island-milled cedar, hosted by Carolyn Lidwig), plus Lois Williams' and Mary Scholl's gardens (the Scholl property formerly owned by Mary Ellen Gallagher). An evening archaeology lecture by Terri Bussey recounts, in the reporter's paraphrase, her account of a personal research project beginning around 1985 into Native American history and a stone arrangement she identified as deliberately placed rather than glacially scattered, aligned to the North Star and a star pattern; this record does not independently verify Bussey's account and treats it only as a description of the lecture given, not as established archaeological fact — see the separate KB record of the stone-circle discovery for that claim on its own terms. Wednesday: Protar's Home open house; the Art Show opened at the School Gym, filling it, with artists including Leslie Weaver (baskets), Bruce Struik (driftwood art), Ray Denny (wood sculpture), Nancy Sommers and Ellen Hill (stained glass), watercolorists including Shirley Gladish and Antje Price, oil painters including Alex Siudara and Kay Masini, and Ruth Denny (rugs); a Children's Treasure Hunt at the Print Shop Museum with clues by Amy Munger; Ramon Nelson's Part I talk on his childhood on High Island as a member of the House of David; and an 8pm lecture by Gillingham, "Reptile Love and War Down Under: Mating Behavior of New Zealand's Tuatara," describing his research trip to New Zealand to help study a then-endangered species. Thursday: the Pet Show at the Print Shop, organized by Liz and Paul Niehaus and Doris and Lars Larson, drawing about 120 children and parents with pets photographed in the Museum jail by Laurene Adams; and a "Lighthouses of the Great Lakes & Beaver Island" lecture by Mike Van Hoey. Friday: children's Art Project Workshops (acting by Josh Broder, sketching at the Print Shop); Ramon Nelson's Part II talk on High Island history; and a Protar-anniversary lecture by Antje Price recounting Protar's European family background and given name, Friedrich Peirs von Parrot — detail this article does not repeat in full, reserving it for the Protar biography. Saturday: art demonstrations organized by Ray and Ruth Denny (pottery by Harold Hart, glass-prism work by Ellen Hill, miniature baskets by Debra Van Linden Blair, nail sculpture by Ray Denny) with a raffle of art objects, and a closing square dance at the school for about 50 people, with music by Glen and Starr Hendrix and caller John Freeman of Ann Arbor. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1988-08_Beaver-Beacon
- The held twenty-page August issue PDF is paired with the canonical OCR source and confirms the Museum Week recap.data1 · beaver-island-archive · scans · beaver_beacon · issues · 1988-08_Beaver-Beacon
- Reports Museum Week "went very smoothly" and that Protar t-shirts and Volume III of the Journal sold well. The holding institution's portal restricts automated access; the archive holds a copy of this issue and can provide it on request.data1 · beaver-island-archive · beaver_beacon · 1988-09_Beaver-Beacon
- The held twenty-two-page September issue PDF is paired with the canonical OCR source and confirms the annual-meeting Museum Week follow-up.data1 · beaver-island-archive · scans · beaver_beacon · issues · 1988-09_Beaver-Beacon
Added 3 August 2026 · revised 4 August 2026. Recent changes
Cite this article
Beaver Island Archive, “Beaver Island Museum Week, 1988”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/events/beaver-island-museum-week-1988/, accessed [date], citing Beaver Island Historical Society notice, Beaver Beacon, May 1988. (and 7 further sources listed on the page).
Last revised 2026-08-04. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.
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