The embattled Boone County Historical Society (BCHS) is selling the Mamie Doud Eisenhower Birthplace, and the lovers of Mamie and guardians of Boone history are enraged at the prospect.
“This proposed sale is a blatant betrayal by the BCHS to generations of Boone residents, Past, Present and Future,” declared Boone City Council member Gregory K. Piklapp in a public letter posted Sept. 7 on his Facebook page. Piklapp said the sale would entail “the loss of local history forever.”
The BCHS move to sell Mamie’s birthplace comes after a year of steadily increasing pressure on the historical society, including the loss of all its funding and the blackening of its name on social media. The pressure has been applied by a faction within the BCHS membership that not only loves Mamie but also hates the society’s executive director, Mara MacKay of Gilbert.
The trouble started last October, when the BCHS board announced a two-year closure of the Mamie house for repairs. The lovers of Mamie disagreed with the decision and also with the long-term plans for the birthplace, and their opposition was mobilized by longtime volunteer and Boone grandee George Eckstein.
When the BCHS declined to sell back the birthplace to its former owners for $1 — the same price the BCHS paid for the dilapidated property in 2006 — the Eckstein faction persuaded the Boone City Council, the Boone County Board of Supervisors and half-a-dozen private donor agencies to withhold their monies from the society for the current fiscal year, which started July 1.
The historical society made its final appeal to the city and county authorities in an Aug. 24 letter, explaining that “the money was withheld because the BCHS encountered an internal conflict in relation to the Mamie Eisenhower property, a conflict that was impossible to reconcile. Our organization cannot give back a property that is a major financial asset.”
The board urged the city councilors and county supervisors to restore its funding so it could “avoid selling off the Mamie Eisenhower property and avoid reducing the Eisenhower collection.”
The public funding was not forthcoming, and the results were predictable. Deprived of their usual operating funds, the BCHS board moved to minimize its expenses, voting in late August to cease employing the full-time executive director and part-time administrative assistant and to lay off its cleaning detail.
“With operating funds cut by the city and county, we’ve reached a crossroads,” the BCHS board said in an Aug. 28 letter to members. “Our director will be terminated due to a lack of funding from the city and county. This takes effect Sept. 1.”
The news of MacKay’s departure brought boundless ecstasy to the Eckstein faction, but their joys were cut short when the BCHS board listed the Mamie house with Jon Engelman of Friedrich Iowa Realty in Ames, which sells properties in Boone and Story counties.
“Drastic reductions in municipal and local funding are also leading to the unavoidable sale of the Mamie Doud Eisenhower Birthplace,” the board letter said, “since we can no longer afford to keep it going or give it away.”
The official reaction was swift and stern. Boone City Council member Piklapp predicted the sale of the Mamie house would “destroy any remaining public goodwill essential to future fundraising campaigns for other BCHS-owned facilities,” and he himself promised “to oppose any future funding requests made by that organization under the current leadership. I have no faith that any public funding provided by the city would be spent for the public good given recent actions.”
The “current leadership” of the BCHS, led by President Janet Tait, a board member since 2009, has weathered the year-long storm of insults and abuse heaped upon it by the lovers of Mamie. Intimidation has more recently taken the forms of alleged stalking, harassment and even assault. A board member’s windows were reportedly shot out at her workplace.
“They’re forcing the destruction of an organization that they pretend to care so much about,” Tait told ThePerryNews Thursday, “and they claim that we are the source of the destruction.”
How did relations sink so low? Efforts to reconcile the lovers of Mamie with the BCHS repeatedly failed. Public meetings with the dissenting faction continually devolved into disorderly shouting, beginning with a December 2017 Boone City Council meeting and continuing at the BCHS annual meeting in January 2018.
The lovers of Mamie forced a special election of the BCHS membership to be called in March, but their gambit to oust the current board of directors failed. In June Boone Mayor John Slight asked the Iowa Auditor of State’s office to conduct a financial audit of the BCHS, with a report expected later this fall.
Through all the strife, a constant drumbeat of invective and insinuations about the BCHS board of directors and particularly about MacKay could be heard on the Boone, IA Community Page on Facebook, the primary platform where the lovers of Mamie vented their rage and rancor and also hinted at the impropriety and even criminality of their enemies.
The administrators of the Boone Community Page on Facebook appear to be Corwin Coldbrooke, Erin Canfield, Kristen Erickson Eckard, Blake Elsberry, Kris Geronsin Wolf and Jennifer Hanson. None of the administrators responded to requests from ThePerryNews for comments.
A voice of notable stridency in the Eckstein faction is Linda Blakely of Boone, a figure well known in Dallas County for her animal-rescue business. Blakely entered the Mamie fray in June and quickly asserted her mastery of the documentary record and her leadership of the lovers of Mamie.
Blakely created a private Facebook meeting place for the hardcore opponents of MacKay and the BCHS board. Her page, Voices of Change-Boone County Historical Society, claims to be “a voice for the membership that was shut down and kicked out of the Historical Society,” according to the page’s mission statement.
“We have been battered and beaten in social media,” Tait said with a sigh, “and it continues and gets even worse. But all along we have not made any knee-jerk reactions. We have not responded. We have not said anything nasty to any person of the opposition group. And I think that aggravates them because they don’t know what’s going to wake us other than choking off all the money. They think that if we go bankrupt, they’ll be able to swoop in and take over, but that’s not the way it works.”
MacKay is no longer on the BCHS payroll, but she is still active as a volunteer member of the society. Her eye is still on the long-term viability of the society and its museums.
“My time with the BCHS was ushered in amid difficult times,” MacKay told ThePerryNews. “In 2016 the board asked me to address those difficulties, such as the facade collapse and safety concerns at Kate Shelley Park and at the Eisenhower facility. In 2017, what was hoped to have been the next era of public engagement for the Eisenhower facility didn’t take off. Now, to bookend, there are difficult challenges for the future of the BCHS as paid staff departs in what feels like a premature and unnecessary end.”
MacKay’s unfailing cheerfulness and upbeat positivity is matched by Tait’s stoic equanimity.
“It’s best not to engage in a negative way, and that seems to be the only way with the dissenting group,” Tait said. “Some months ago, my son said, ‘Mom, when are you going to get a brick through your window or slashed tires?’ When they’re not getting what they want from us, they get more bold. Things are starting to unravel because their boldness is going to take them over the line one of these days. They’re going to get careless and do something that is truly going to be a suable act. I guess that’s what you get for putting yourself in the lime light as a target. We’re just trying to do what’s right. We have not done anything knowingly wrong.”
While the lovers of Mamie fear “the loss of local history forever,” Boone’s past is perhaps less in doubt than its future. It needs a skilled arbiter to reconcile these opposites.
“It’s one of two directions now,” MacKay said. “Either up and out in a collaborative fashion or down in a grisly and embarrassing crash for all involved. I hope for the best and brace for the worst. May the excellent group of volunteers who operate the Boone History Center find the strength to carry on and renew the vision and mission.”
They actually blew it and should disband. Very sad.
I read the article three times and think it is just a presentation of the timeline. I continue to try to learn what is happening in Boone related to the house, and I hope all sides can come together and work toward a solution. This can be done without public character assassination as has been the case on the Boone, IA Community Page on Facebook. Because what, if anything, is accomplished by publicly attacking someone? “You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar,” as my mother always said, and it’s a good saying to live by.
My wife’s family is from Boone. We now live in Pittsburgh, Pa. The Pittsburgh area has experienced VERY similar situations over the past 60(!) years. Our Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation is literally world famous for addressing matters such as this. Boone residents interested in preserving Mamie’s house should reach out to the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation in Pittsburgh, Pa., for assistance. PH&LF has “saved” entire neighborhoods in this area. These were actually dilapidated neighborhoods.
This article is very one-sided in favor of the BCHS Board of Directors. Is this because the author did not ask the ousted board members their point of view or just isn’t interested in both sides of the story?
Thank you for your comment. We believe the story is an even-handed report of the situation, given the limitations of sources available to ThePerryNews.com. The ousted board members have apparently been instructed by their leaders not to grant interviews to ThePerryNews.com, and ThePerryNews.com has been excluded from the Boone, IA Community Page on Facebook apparently in order to prevent similar communication with ousted board members and other opponents of the BCHS. We believe ThePerryNews.com’s ongoing coverage of this sad state of affairs has been fair and balanced and strictly factual, but you may make this judgment for yourself by reading our stories.
Thanks, Jim. I read your January article on the History Center’s annual board meeting fiasco. It seemed pretty balanced and factual. However, this article and the previous two you wrote on this subject are much more biased toward the Board. I understand you are hindered by no contact from the ousted board members. Perhaps it would be better to not report on this subject again until you can get comments from both sides and thereby fairly represent the facts. That way your readers will be better able to see the whole picture. I understand there is a lawsuit now, so you probably won’t get comments from both sides.