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What matters in preservation

Preservation Alliance of West Virginia has convened for its annual conference in Beverly this weekend with the theme: “This Place Matters.” The keynote speaker for the conference is Elkins native and MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering, Dr. John Ochsendorf.

Ochsendorf explains how the field of preservation straddles the “two cultures of science and the humanities.” He grew up with our YMCA Director Sid Gillispie in the 1970s and 1980s playing in crumbling buildings like Halliehurst and Graceland before they were rehabilitated. They both learned to think about the people who had lived and worked in Elkins in earlier generations.

Now these two young adults preserve old buildings for cultural reasons. Gillispie has made the YMCA a meeting place for all generations of Elkins children, and Ochsendort is helping his students of architecture and engineering appreciate how to create and rehabilitate beautiful buildings all over the world.

PAWV Conference training helps Board of Directors President Priscilla Gay and me think about the dual purposes for the Kump Education Center. Our mission for education is “to promote teacher excellence and student achievement,” but we also are charged with responsibilities for the rehabilitation of the Historic Kump House.

During one of the PAWV conference sessions, a presenter said we must take a little time to think about what we love about the place we are trying to preserve. My childhood memories are my reasons for loving the Kump property, and they have everything to do with educational purposes for the next generation.

It is not fun to send hours, days, weeks, months and years working on old buildings. I would rather be on the bike trail or playing with my grandchildren or doing almost anything other than the musty dusty work of historic preservation.

However, when I see what Gillispie has done at the YMCA and hear how Ochsendorf straddles the “two cultures of science and the humanities,” I can recognize how preservation and education work together. They offer a window into the past and serve as a gateway to the future.

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