Cheers to 50 Years

2021 marks the Texarkana Museums System’s golden jubilee

by ELLEN ORR

photo by ALAMOND PHOTOGRAPHY

1990 – Texarkana Museums’ System’s annual  Quadrangle Festival

1980 – Mrs John Garrett, Katy Caver, Margaret Leigh Moores and Lynn Vammen

1985 – Ribbon cutting at the Texarkana Historical Museum with Katy Caver in the center

Celebrating 50 trips around the sun, the Texarkana Museums System is hosting events throughout 2021 that pay homage to its birth year. Spotlighting the fashion, entertainment, food, technology, science, and other aspects of Texarkana life in 1971, these events occur almost every weekend and serve people of all ages. 

The month of March is packed with Saturday events: for the adults, an oral-history exhibit at the Museum of Regional History and a retro fashion show at the P. J. Ahern Home; and for the children, a golden Easter egg hunt at the Ace of Clubs House, plus a recreation of a 1971 Saturday morning—complete with sugary cereal and cartoons—hosted by Discovery Place. The rest of the calendar is just as delightfully planned.

“We’ll be hosting a ping-pong tournament, because 1971 is the year that the ping-pong ambassadors went to China,” said Board President Velvet Hall Cool. “We’re hopefully going to reestablish our Movies on the Lawn series and show some 1971 movies. There were enormous technological advances in the field of astronomy in 1971, so we plan to have a big astronomy event at the Ace of Clubs House around one of the meteor showers.”

This plethora of cultural contribution would surely delight the founders of the Museums System, who, in September of 1971, opened what we now know as the Texarkana Museum of Regional History. Then called the Texarkana Historical Society and Museum, its founding was made possible in large part thanks to the support of the Morriss and Offenhauser families. The historic Offenhauser Insurance Company Building, which has housed the museum since its inception, was donated to the Historical Society.

Since day one, the museum has displayed artifacts; they do not purchase pieces for display. “We have thousands of objects,” said curator Jamie Simmons. “People constantly reach out to us with pieces of history that they’d like to donate. It’s really amazing, the eclectic nature of our collection. We really can depict a specific period in time pretty accurately and very broadly.”

2001 – Mary Fore with Trent and Bethany Hanna at the Ace of Clubs House during Christmas

The late Katy Caver was the first curator and director of the Museums System. “Her effort is really what laid the foundation for the Museums System,” Jamie said, “and I really do think that we’ve been able to last for 50 years due in part to [the work Mrs. Caver did] in those early years. I think is very important to how the museum has developed.” 

The Museums System, which now consists of the Museum of Regional History, the Discovery Place Children’s Museum, and two historic homes has grown in many ways as was always intended by Mrs. Caver and others. “The Museums System was set up to spearhead preservation efforts that included saving historic sites [in both states],” Jamie explained, “and we’ve been able to operate both the Ace of Clubs House [located in Texas] and the PJ Ahern Home [located in Arkansas] for tours.

“Where we are now is thanks to where we started,” Jamie said. “I think that setting those goals early on has helped us maintain that trajectory.”

Looking ahead to the next 50 years, Velvet and Jamie see adaptability as key to preservation and growth. “One of the things that we grapple with is that technology changes so much, and the way that we preserve history today may be vastly different 50 years from now,” Velvet said. “My vision is that, however society pushes us forward, the museums system can adapt and maintain, so that the work we have done over the past 50 years does not get lost in the next 50 years.”

Jamie agreed, adding that historical preservation is vital not only for history’s sake but also for making meaning of current day. “I’ve always seen [the Museums System] as a bridge between the present and the past,” she said. “[My vision is to continue] bridging that divide, so that people have an understanding and appreciation of where we came from as a community and can use that to understand where they are in the present moment.”

The Texarkana Museums System is open Tuesday through Sunday. A key way to support the museums system is by becoming a member, either in-person at the Museum of Regional History or online at www.texarkanamuseums.org. Follow the TMS’s Facebook page for event updates and more.