Harbor History Museum thanks volunteers with breakfast event

The Harbor History Museum is making breakfast — and is serving it to volunteers past, present and future.

The first annual Volunteer Meet and Greet breakfast will be held from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday (Jan. 23).

The event is for current volunteers, past volunteers and community members interested in volunteering for the museum, according to volunteer coordinator Sarah Till.

“We really wanted to get the community more involved with the museum,” Till said.

The goal of the breakfast event is not only for the museum staff to meet the more than 35 current volunteers, but also to give volunteers a chance to talk with the staff about their ideas for the museum.

“The volunteers are such a large part of the museum,” Till said. “We couldn’t function without them.”

Alphild Dick, marketing and events coordinator for the museum, echoed Till’s sentiment.

“The volunteers are absolutely essential for the museum,” Dick said. “They’re really the heart and soul of the place.”

Museum volunteers work in areas all over the museum, filling roles in the research room, collections, serving as docents and working on the restoration project of the Shenandoah.

The longest tenured museum volunteer is Rosemary Ross, a Gig Harbor native.

Ross started volunteering for the museum when it was housed in the basement of the old Catholic church in the late 1960s.

She and her husband, Ronald, are descendants of some of Gig Harbor’s founding families — her family had a “homestead” in Rosedale in the 1880s.

“I felt like I was one of the antiques almost,” Ross said of her years in Gig Harbor. “It’s work that I love to do and it’s fun to meet people from this area and from other places.”

Till said the stories Ross shares of growing up in Gig Harbor are something she always looks forward to hearing, especially Ross’s story of skating on the Harbor when it froze in the winter of 1950.

“The museum is pretty much self-explanatory,” said Ross, who volunteers as a docent every Tuesday. “Some people like to wander around and look at things themselves and other people like a tour. I do whatever I need to do.”

The range of volunteer backgrounds spans community college deans and carpenters to teachers, community leaders and service members, Till said.

“They really, genuinely believe in the mission of the museum,” she said.

Till, originally from Tacoma, has been living in Gig Harbor for 13 years and been at the museum for four.

“I call this (area) home,” she said.

Till encourages new volunteers to attend the breakfast and to bring a friend.

“If you have a love for history and your community, you should be here,” she said.

To RSVP for the event, contact Till at (253) 858-6722, extension 8 or email sarah@harborhistorymuseum.org.

The Harbor History Museum is located at 4121 Harborview Drive.

This story was originally published January 19, 2016 at 12:55 PM with the headline "Harbor History Museum thanks volunteers with breakfast event."