[at-l] A.T. Museum: Significant A.T. individuals

[Linda Patton]

The President of the Appalachian Trail Museum Society, Larry Luxenberg, 
has asked me to head up the "Priority Collections" committee.  The 
charge for this committee is to identify significant A. T. figures 
whose memorabilia should be preserved, to gather contact information 
for those people or their families, and to be sure the contacts are made 
and documented.  Too often people die and their A.T. items are discarded 
or scattered before the Museum knows to ask for them.  Or contemporary 
hikers aren't aware that their "stuff" is of value to the Museum; or 
they don't know how to contact the Museum.  

We are in the process of building a database of people who should be 
contacted.  Of course Earl Shaffer's family is already on board.  We have 
some items from Sam Waddle and we hope to have more when his family is 
ready to part with them.  And there are others, such as Flyin' Brian 
Robinson, who have donated items.  Some others we have in mind are the 
families of Myron Avery, William O. Douglas, Ruth Blackburn, O.W. Lacy, 
Roly Muesser, and Ed Garvey (if you know family contact people for any of 
those, please notify me).

I am writing to this List to ask for your input to this database.  
Please take some time for this vital task, and let me know all the 
names you can think of that need to be included.  We need names of 
important (for any reason) past hikers, current hikers, hostels (or 
any other place that might have old registers), parks or associations 
personnel, trail angels, or any other trail-related people.  Never 
mind if you think we already have the name, give it to us anyway.  
You never know what perfectly obvious name we may have overlooked.  

The Museum is on the verge of getting some climate-controlled storage 
space in Harpers Ferry and, at an April planning retreat, a hired 
consultant gave the Museum Society a preliminary report on practical 
issues to be considered in setting up the Museum.  So progress is 
being made.

Now we need your help, and hope you will respond.  Email me off-list.
Thank you!

~~ Linda Patton/aka/eArThworm   lpatton at mailer.fsu.edu
on behalf of the A.T. Museum's "Priority Collections" Committee