Here's to the Children!

Tomorrow's the BIG Day, the opening of our 42nd season of service from our location here in beautiful Fort Walla Walla park. We already have something approaching 2,000 participants booked for the admission-free school tour program this spring. The program is open to public, private, and home schools and is generously sponsored by Pacific Power Foundation;Boise, Inc's Wallula Mill; The Blue Mountain Area Foundation; the J.L. Stubblefield Trust; and the Bonnie Braden Trust.

Most years we get kids from across Washington and Oregon, as well as from Idaho. As school budgets have been strapped the past couple years, we've seen a bit of a decline in numbers, but the progam still averages more than 5,000 participants each year. Not a bad way to put kids in touch with their heritage!

Many schools that arrive at the Museum also manage to book a tour at Whitman Mission for the other half of their day. I'm told that many schools also take their students to either the Yakama Nation Museum or to Tamastastlikt Cultural Institute, the museum of The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. When they're through touring, the kids end up with a pretty good base of regional historical knowledge.

We enjoy being a part of the region's educational efforts. Kids who know of their heritage are far more capable of helping to lead our communities into the future. To that end, the past is just about our only road map into the future and we ignore it to our peril. It doesn't matter if your family has lived here for umpteen generations or if you just finished unloading the moving van, this is the region's heritage and now it's yours. Knowing it helps us cope with daily existence as well as helping to make a brighter tomorrow for us all.

These days, we interact with regional school kids only once or twice in their K-12 years. We'd like to make that five or six times. Our plans for the future include hirring an Education Coordinator so that we can do more outreach in the schools and have more things for kids while they're at the Museum. History class is too often a 'death match' between kids and the guy at the front of the class (and he'd win if it weren't for graduation!) ... I think it's all about people and that should make it all the time interesting.

So here's to the kids! Bring 'em to the Museum this week during Spring Break ... it's one of the best things parents can do for their kids.

Enjoy the photos ... I like the one of Walla Walla's Edison School with the kids near their busses, all waving.