New historical society works to preserve ‘lush’ history
“Alpena really has a lush history here,” said Don La Bare, “and a lot of the times it’s not so accessible.”
La Bare is an archaeology and historic preservation researcher. He’s one of the people who came out Thursday night at Besser Museum to discuss if the community would be interested in establishing Alpena’s first historical society.
The master mind behind forming this new group is Cindy Ranshaw.
She said in an email to WBKB that she wants the new historical society to “capture those moments, memories, and memoirs and preserve them in one central location, that future generations be able to go to one place to search for those little documents that might fill a missing piece of the puzzle to their family story despite how large or small.”
Even though Alpena has libraries and a museum to document and preserve artifacts in Northeast Michigan, attendees unanimously agreed it’s not enough.
“My big hope is that by being over here, I can kind of get more involved with that. And historic society kinds of fits those needs,” said La Bare. “I really do think it’s something. We’ve been all talking here about it.”
Ranshaw said she believes what they’re trying to establish is a public necessity.
