Hello ALHFAMily,
In some ways, it is hard for me to believe we are already two-thirds through the first quarter of 2025. It has been a very busy two months for the ALHFAM Board of Directors. The Committee on Organizational Partnerships (COOP) has been in conversations with board members of EXARC about the possibility of partnering on future ALHFAM annual conferences. Future Sites Committee liaisons to the 2025 Conference Committee have been hard at work assisting the committee to ensure our upcoming annual meeting and conference is not only a success but one that will greatly benefit our members and attendees. This committee has also been meeting with the 2026 Conference Committee and is excited about the way things are shaping up with the conference at The Henry Ford, which will be held in collaboration with AIMA. The Future Sites Committee also presented the final proposal from Colonial Williamsburg to host the 2027 Annual Meeting and Conference, which the board accepted.
Members of the Board also were excited to see the new version of the A.S.K. database, which is now hosted on CatalogIt and is ready for member use. The introductory page for A.S.K. is here. The Marketing and Membership Committee has been hard at work designing new marketing pieces, which should be in print very soon. Our Treasurer reported the final numbers for 2024, and they were much better than originally budgeted, which resulted in a much more fiscally responsible operation. Our Communications Committee has been drafting a Values and Principles statement, which is going through a final round of edits. The Nominating Committee recruited members to stand for the general election. This election is live now, check your inbox (or Spam filters) for the ballot. The voting deadline is March 7th, 2025, at midnight, Eastern Time, so be sure to get your ballot cast before then. The Board of Directors also approved training for members, which is supported by IDEA funding made possible by a generous donation. Finally, our Past President, Kathy Dickson, has spearheaded an effort to complete the Standard Operating Procedures document, which will serve as a guide for how the Association operates. I share all of this to pull back the curtains on the important work this volunteer board does for its members and to publicly thank the Board for their efforts.
These first two months of 2025 have also been a pretty chaotic time in the personal and professional lives of many of our members, friends and colleagues. Without getting into the weeds on much of the political atmosphere, I wanted to share some personal thoughts and reflections on the impact of some of the recent Executive Orders. When I read about the job cuts to the National Park Service and United States Forest Service, it made me think about how these cuts affect me and people like me. Both of these agencies have a lot to do with who I am as a person and why I do the work I do each day. Growing up, I enjoyed the ability to travel to public lands with my family to take part in recreational activities. We went to parks and historic sites around the country to witness and be engaged by living history programs, lectures, guided tours and interpretation of cultural resources, which had a major impact on my love of history, stewardship of cultural assets, and a desire to share a passion for learning about history with others. For anyone who knows me well, you have probably heard these stories before, but I still have memories of programs and events where I would see and smell bacon being cooked in a cast iron skillet over a campfire. I witnessed wagons being pulled across a field by a team of mules. I held tools and implements, which at that time were 125 years old. I felt the scratchiness of wool clothing. These experiences made history come to life for me and formed a foundation for how I operate today. In grade school, during career days, I would research how to become a history teacher, archaeologist and, of course, park ranger. These are the people who spoke my language and understood why I cared about history, because they cared, too.
After college, when I was hired for my first full-time job as an historical interpreter at Barrington Living History Farm (now Barrington Plantation), I knew I had found what I wanted to do. I had the opportunity to engage people using interpretation and to make history come to life for them the way it had for me. This was, and continues to be, exactly what I want to do with my career. Beyond my career, access to public lands continues to be an important part of my life. My family and I travel to public lands every year to recreate, relax, learn and grow. On these public lands, I learned to paddle a canoe, use a compass to find my way, build a campfire to cook food, set up a tent to sleep in, and now I pass on these skills to my children. Stewardship of these public lands must continue, and in these chaotic times it is incumbent upon us to see that these places are protected. In my experience, the best preservation comes through use. Visiting public lands offers improved health and wellness, adventures with friends and family, life-long learning opportunities which may enhance creativity and critical thinking, as well as the opportunity for social bonding that comes from these experiences.
While I feel certain that cooler heads will prevail and this period of chaos will subside, I am reminded of what is important to me. I will continue to engage an interested public and ensure their ability to have accessible experiences that have an impact on their lives. I will continue to support programs that allow people to make memories, to learn and to grow. I will continue to advocate for workshops, tours, and interpretive talks that take a wholistic approach and ensure everyone’s stories are being told. This is just who I am, and I know it is who many of you are, too. So, at the end of the day, politics will not define me. It is those values and principles that I was taught by my family and the experiences I had as a child, and hope to give my children, that will continue to guide my steps forward.
Best regards,
Jim Lauderdale
ALHFAM President
jim.lauderdale@alhfam.org
ALHFAM 
So well put, Jim. Great message for all of us in Public History and who care deeply enough to dedicate our working lives to it.
Ed Schultz