Middlemist Research Grant Awarded to TCHM Curators

Kate Crosby, TCHM Exhibits Curator, with Joshua Simon, Assistant Exhibits Curator, submitted a research grant application in 2023 to the Drake Middlemist Scholarship Fund, requesting support to meet a simple aim: conduct research on behalf of the TCHM exhibitions department for two upcoming special exhibitions, Picnics and Parades: 100 Years of the Coast Guard Festival and Ship Shape Sisters: The Women of the  Coast Guard SPARS. Specifically, Simon and Crosby hoped to gather more historical information about SPARS who were connected to the Tri-Cities community.

 The Picnics and Parades: 100 Years of the Coast Guard Festival exhibit will open to the public on May 18. Featuring images, objects, uniforms, and documents, this exhibit revisits early days of the Coast Guard Festival, and will present notable artifacts from the past 100 years, including newly-accessioned objects from the Coast Guard Festival’s archives.

Crosby and Simon planned and executed a packed itinerary, with multiple trips to visit Indiana, Illinois, Connecticut, and Washington, D.C. Each trip proved to be a whirlwind of collections investigation: scanning images and documents, gathering historical records, and making connections in the upper echelons of the Coast Guard. 

 Simon spent two days in January visiting the Purdue University Archives and Special Collections in West Lafayette, IN, and, later, also visited The National Archives at Chicago, IL. This trip proved to be a rare chance to research a key figure of the SPARS: Dorothy Stratton, the director of the SPARS during WWII. Captain Stratton was the Director of the SPARS from its inception in 1942 until her resignation in 1946, when the SPARS were dissolved following the war, prior to their reinstatement in 1949. 

The National Archives at Chicago, IL, contain Life Saving Station logs for Station Grand Haven and other District 9 stations, and have provided important information on the earliest Coast Guard picnics.

The final destination for the research project was Washington D.C., where Simon visited both the United States Coast Guard Historian’s Office and the National Archives. At the National Archives, Simon found and scanned the entirety of the logbooks of the Grand Haven lighthouse keeper from the dates 1875-1900 and 1920-1940. At the Coast Guard Historian’s Office, Simon viewed materials that provided extensive background and logistical information about the visit of Coast Guard dignitaries to the 1985 Coast Guard Festival, among other Festival materials.

As the capstone to this project, Crosby and Simon plan to create two digital exhibitions from the mounted exhibitions on display in Centennial Hall and the Small Gallery.