Thayer County museum in Belvidere expands

Each arrowhead, each letter home from a lonely soldier, each yellowed wedding dress alone can't tell the whole story of Thayer County.

Maybe that's why the less-is-more approach is not commonly embraced by the Thayer County Historical Society.

The society's museum is housed in the former Belvidere school, a brick schoolhouse literally filled to the rafters with vintage clothes, handmade furniture, taxidermied mascots and other items donated since the school became a museum in 1970.

"We rarely refuse anything," said curator and society president Jackie Williamson. "But we just can't fit another thing in."

So this summer the society is putting the finishing touches on a new annex across the street from the museum.

The new building has heating and air-conditioning, a big plus for society members who now sort items in the stifling heat and dust of the overcrowded old school.

And, maybe most important, by next summer the museum will be open for regular hours on most weekdays.

"People have to track us down, because right now it's too hot for anyone to be in there all the time" said Lois Struve, a member of the society. "And you know how hard it is to get ahold of people."

Struve said making the museum more hospitable was very important to her late husband, Harold Struve, who had a major role in bringing about the expansion.

The longtime Deshler mayor, businessman and editor of the Deshler Rustler died five years ago and left $100,000 to the historical society on the condition the society raise another $100,000 itself.

The group reached that goal this year, Williamson said.

Lois Struve said she also will donate money for a large mural in the entryway of the annex. Endicott Brick artists are working on a design that incorporates elements from each Thayer County town.

That idea of representing all of Thayer County's 575 square miles also will be emphasized in the annex's exhibits.

Williamson said she hopes to divide the long main part of the 50- by 100-foot building into sections for each town. She hopes towns will work with the museum's collection to create new displays on a seasonal or at least yearly basis.

The society also will move its historic documents and more popular exhibits into the temperature-controlled  and archivally preferable annex. The displays will be hauled over and overhauled and will likely include artifacts from the World War II Bruning Air Base, records of an early women's suffrage movement that began in Thayer County and tales of the towns that are no more, Williamson said.

The old school will stay much the same. The classrooms that were remodeled into a kitchen, parlor, lady's sitting room, doctor's office and other turn-of-the-century rooms all will remain across the street.

So will artifacts such as a brightly painted curtain from an Alexandria theater and a cutout of Maxine Gates, the hefty Hebron native who made several movies in Hollywood.

"She was like Jean Harlow, only heavier," Williamson said. "She was on what they called the Baby Beef Chorus Line."

When a community bands together to add an annex onto any school, the goal is always to have the school's hallways be far less crowded come fall.

And though the Belvidere school graduated its last class of two seniors in 1958, that couldn't be more true now.

Williamson said she can scarcely wait another day for the annex to open. As an example, she recounted an experience she had last week.

"Somebody called weeks ago and  wanted to donate a parlor organ from the 1904 World's Fair," Williamson said.

So so she spent more than one  sweaty afternoon  moving all kinds of aging and delicate items out of the hallways to allow the organ and its carriers to pass through.

But every time she made space in the halls, they quickly filled back up again.

"Oh, that was quite the struggle," Williamson said.  "It certainly will be nice to have some elbow room."

Reach Kendra Waltke at (402) 473-7303 or kwaltke@journalstar.com.