“The
fact of the matter is, you have a noble history,” well-known
college speaker Will Keim tells the 200 or so people who came
to the Holiday Inn and Conference Center in Big Rapids last January
to celebrate the 150th birthday of Ferris State University founder
Woodbridge N. Ferris.
Earlier in the day, then-outgoing President
William Sederburg hosted the laying of a wreath at Ferris’
statue on the campus quad, which later was transferred to Ferris’
gravesite following an afternoon procession.
The scene at the Highland View Cemetery with
Sederburg, Keim, History Commemoration Task Force Chair Harry
Dempsey and local dignitaries was reminiscent of one 50 years
earlier, at Ferris’s 100th birthday commemoration—as
photos from the archives attest.
In 50 more years, if future editors of Crimson
& Gold want a historical photo to compare to current events,
they might find a copy of the magazine in a storage box—or
the digital photo itself transferred onto the newest computer
memory device—thanks to Melinda McMartin.
History
at the Ready
McMartin, Ferris State’s new archivist,
started putting order to University history in September 2002
and quickly discovered she had quite a job ahead of her.
For several months into her new position, the
University was storing its archives in an off-campus storage facility.
“Not a good situation,” McMartin notes. “There
were a lot of people who didn’t even know that the University
had an archives.”
McMartin says there are two ways to become an
archivist: either get a master’s degree in public history
or a master’s in library science. “People still haven’t
decided which is the better way, so just to cover my bases I went
to the University of Albany and got both degrees.”
Her training, along with a self-professed penchant
for digging out information and organizing things, has prepared
her for the dual challenges of her position—structuring
the archives and setting up a University-wide system of record
retention.
“My goal is to get the material arranged
in such a way that someone could come to me wanting to mount an
exhibit on, say, the history of women at Ferris, and I could tell
them exactly where that material is,” says McMartin. “A
search needs to be directed, rather than a happy wandering through
boxes.”
A
Figure of Central Validity
One of the first uses of materials from the
approximately 1,300 boxes that now are being moved to storage
space in the Alumni Building, was to build displays for the fledgling
Woodbridge N. Ferris Museum, also sited in the Alumni Building.
The museum will highlight Ferris’ career
not only as founder of the University that bears his name, his
life in politics as twice-elected governor of Michigan and U.S.
senator, but as someone who was, according to Keim, “a figure
of central validity.”
“There was a time in our nation’s
history that when a crisis arose, the people looked to these leaders
for answers, wisdom and guidance,” Keim says. “We
don’t have very many of those folks anymore.”
Part of the “noble history” Keim
talks about in terms of Ferris—both the man and the institution—is
a legacy of inclusiveness.
“Woodbridge Ferris was all over this in
the 1800s,” Keim says. “Women and people of color
have been welcomed here for over 100 years, while there are still
schools in this country even today where some folks aren’t
welcome.”
During the wreath laying at Highland Park, Big
Rapids Mayor Ed Burch echoed that sentiment. He recalled his mother
who earned a degree at what was then the Ferris Institute.
“She always impressed on me that there
were no distinctions because of gender at the institute. My mother
taught for 40 years, and it all started because a little girl
from off the farm could come to Big Rapids for an education.”
The importance of the University’s archives,
records and now museum lie not in enshrining the past, but in
helping to preserve those core values of the institution both
for the present generation and for generations to come. While
these values live most strongly in the people who study, teach
and work at Ferris, the physical artifacts of that legacy will
now have a much-deserved new home.
Happy birthday, Mr. President!
