I’m curious what turning this virtual micro-museum into a physical space would be like? What would it take?
I know where I’d locate it.
This is a recent curiosity I’m following. So far it’s consisted of looking up the old 4 unit apartment building my Great Grandma Rose lived in for 50 years. It’s located on 2416 Atwood Avenue in Madison, Wisconsin and is right near where I used to dance. I write about visiting her there every week in Sunday Brunch with Rose.
When I did a quick search online I found her exact unit #3 that she lived in was recently on the market to rent! There are updated pictures and even a virtual tour!! See it here. It’s like I’m right back there walking through her hallway to her kitchen. The floor plan hasn’t changed at all, but it’s been so nicely updated. That makes me happy. It looks great.
After a quick few texts to my Dad and sisters, I found out it was built in 1900. I also found out who currently owns it, not the same person who Great Grandma was renting from. The new owner bought it in 2010 just before he did a bunch of renovations, like a new roof in 2011 it looks like. It’s amazing what you can uncover and find out with a little research. Connecting the dots is an amazing feeling!
I was in a mood like, why the heck not!
Late last year, well exactly the very next day after the November election, I called the current owner. He happens to be a realtor too. I just said how great it looked and gave him my contact info. in case #3 ever opens back up again. I shared how my Great Grandma had lived there and how it made me happy he took such great care of it.
Wouldn’t it be something if I could step foot in there again? What if I could rent it, buy it? One unit, or the whole property? What if I could turn it into a micro museum?
I could see having a museum in her old apartment. I’d include local pieces of history, including countless stories and firsthand accounts from a memoir my father wrote about his Grandma Rose, born in 1898. She lived in that apartment for 50 years! She only moved out of it a couple years before she passed away and just shy of her 103rd birthday!
I’d include items in the museum I’ve saved from her including an old suitcase she had in the closet of her bedroom, and a couple of her old dresses from the early 1900s I preserved as best I could.
I’d also included items from her son George, who met my Grandma Mary Jean just down the street at the Barrymore Theatre, the same place I would later dance all my dance recitals at. I’d share that my Grandma grew up in Madison too, and that she skated at Tenney Park and is from the Grimm family who were well-known bookbinders in Madison. I wrote about them here: A silver spoon links me to well-known bookbinders and reminds me that: nice things take time.
I’d roll in a large wood wardrobe that my Great Great Uncle Ed Littel owned, I used it as a closet for a year I slept in my dining room.
I wrote about that here: The year I slept in our dinning room and used an old wardrobe for a closet (This is a “members only” post. Get a Golden Ticket password here: Join Annie’s Club)
I just recently got the wardrobe back from my sister and now have it storing old costumes from my theatre days.
Here’s where I paused to follow a curiosity inspired by the wardrobe, and went down in my basement to find a letter I remembered getting from my Great Great Aunt Sarah Ann.
After I found the letter I had questions and I decided to call my Dad. He answered my questions and sent me an eight page PDF document he wrote in 2004 about his Great Uncle. It includes pictures too, many of which I’ve included below. I told him when I called he was “better than Google, or Wikipedia!” He laughed.
With all of this information, and research, I know I have enough to at least start, if not fill a small micro museum. Read on.
My Great Great Uncle Ed Littel helped raise money for the Memorial Union (pictured below) on the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison. I think that’s pretty cool! My Dad says “Aunt Sarah told me that Phil La Follette once said Ed did so much fundraising that he nearly single-handedly built the Union.”
Ed worked as administrative secretary and speech writer for the Governor of Wisconsin named Philip La Follette. Philip was brothers with a senator from Wisconsin named Robert M. La Follette Jr. or “Young Bob.” (Their dad, Robert M. La Follette Sr. “Fighting Bob” is who my high school in Madison, Wisconsin was named after.) I wrote to my Great Great Aunt Sarah Ann, Ed’s wife, to get more information about her husband’s connection with the La Follette family when I was doing a research project in high school, and she wrote me back.
Below is the letter I found from my Great Great Aunt dated March 1, 1997. It’s an example of something I’d put in my physical micro museum. The part of the letter that mentions La Follette, she refers to him as “Bob,” is pictured below.
If you can read her writing, she refers to the governor Philip as Phil, and writes that she knew him and his wife, and that they would see them often in Madison and Washington (D.C.). She also shares that my Great Great Uncle worked for him for what she thought was four terms. (A quick phone call to my Dad, and he confirmed while looking at his research that Phil served three terms but not consecutively (1931-1933 and 1935-1939). She explains that Ed’s life with the La Follettes was before she knew him. So I’m not sure how Ed met the family, how he got the job, or much more. (Here’s a couple of photos of Ed and Phil below.)
Two “Greats” he gets!
Okay, try to follow me here… it got me a bit confused, but when I spoke to my Dad he said Ed was his Great Uncle, his Mom’s (My Grandma Mary Jean’s) Dad’s brother. I had originally thought Ed was my Great Uncle, but the math wasn’t working out, and my Dad cleared that up.
Edward G. Littel served in the military, and worked his way up in the ranks all the way to Lieutenant Colonel in 1944. It says in my Dad’s writings that he “completed work which earned him the Legion of Merit award.” Dad shares “Ed told me this work had to do with the Manhattan Project -the first nuclear bomb.” Dad says he worked with General Leslie Groves who directed the project. He said Ed streamlined the purchasing of uranium which was crucial for making the atom bomb.
That made me pause. I’m sure you might want to too. But, this is his story.
I talked to Dad specifically about this piece of information. I had questions. It’s more than a little complicated. The 2023 film Oppenheimer came up in our conversation. (The film won seven Academy Awards including best picture, as well as five Golden Globes including best motion picture- drama.) Matt Damon played the part of General Leslie Groves mentioned above. He also recalls Ed saying something like a lot of people found him very very difficult to work with, but he managed to work with him alright.
My Dad includes a quote honoring Ed by President Reagan for “devoted and selfless consecration to the service of our country.” He also shares that Ed’s nephew Rom Phillips told my Dad at his Aunt Sarah’s funeral that this citation was for Ed’s early warnings on the dangers of nuclear waste. As well as that he said Ed was the first person to lobby the government on this now universally-recognized threat.
He was also issued the Victory Medal for having served in WWII. Dad includes that on the back of the medal it says ‘Freedom from fear and want, Freedom of speech and religion’ and notes that it’s from the wartime Norman Rockwell paintings.
AND he was also a lawyer in multiple states!
Ed earned his law degree from Marquette University in Wisconsin, and Dad discovered he was one of five attorneys working on law related to nuclear energy. In 1953 he also worked as an assistant to the president for a nuclear company, and during that time is when he met Sarah Ann Little (who I guess was quite a lot younger) in Washington DC. He practiced law there as well after attending Georgetown University Law School, and later was also admitted to the Tennessee bar.
Same last names, what!?
Another confusing fact, Sarah’s maiden name was “Little”! (spelled “le” and not “el”) So I needed clarity on that too since after she married Ed her last name was Littel. Whew!
Dad visited them once in Washington DC and recalls it as a fantastic memory! He writes “I remember an awesome feeling as we drove past the White House at 9pm our first night in town. John F. and Jackie Kennedy lived there then. Ed and Sarah lived just three blocks east of the Capitol. Ed gave my cousin FX and me Washington Senators baseball helmets. Other good memories include walking the steps of the Washington Monument, visiting the huge new Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, seeing thousands of white grave markers below Lee’s mansion on the hill at Arlington National Cemetery, and touring George Washington’s home in Mount Vernon, Virginia.”
His sister and Sarah Ann are standing.
In Sarah Ann’s letter to me she does suggest a book she said I could check out from the library for more information. My Dad’s handwritten dewy decimal number is on the side. I’d often talk to him about papers I was writing. One time I begged him to type my paper, and he made me swear I’d learn to type after that. I’m sitting here typing this now, so I have him and perhaps that very paper to thank for that!
Ed died the year after I was born, so I never knew him. But I somehow have always felt connected to this man, especially when opening the wardrobe doors.
(One more picture of Sarah Ann and Ed)
Both my folks love to write, as is obvious that my Dad had written documentation at the ready to quick send me. And my Dad has often said he wanted to be a speech writer and be in public relations. But until I called him, he didn’t remember that Ed was a speech writer! Dad said though that Ed spent several days writing a letter to his old college friend who owed him a favor, who just so happened to be the Vice President of public relations for General Motors. Dad got an interview in Chicago at General Motors and he was offered a job, but said he didn’t take the job. It was the year before he got married to my mom, I’ll leave it at that.
It’s easy to see how my Dad would have been inspired by his Great Uncle. I’m inspired by re-reading the letter from my Great Great Aunt Sarah Ann and my Dad’s writings and research on his Great Uncle Ed too. I love knowing I can add Ed to the list of writers and inspiring people in my family. It’s been quite the adventure seeing how all these pieces fit together.
Last night my son came home telling me he had a speech to write! “For class president Mom,” he said. My eyes wide, and the excitement hard to contain inside me, I said “Want any help?” He opened his chrome book and showed me his campaign poster he and a couple of his “campaign managers” helped him design. He had some ideas of what to say scribbled out on a sheet of notebook paper. We talked about it at dinner, and afterwards he goes “I’ll make a doc” as he started typing his speech one finger at a time. I said “Are you learning how to type at school?” He reassured me he was, and that this speech wasn’t that big a deal. I had to include this here even so, because my son is a writer, and now speech writer too. AND who knows?
Back to micro museum dreams!
Why write and capture all this anyway?
I feel very strongly that history is important to preserve, that the ordinary people, the “the small and the mighty” as Sharon McMahon’s book is called, (it’s great!) are truly the ones that can make a difference and are who we can learn from. I also find great satisfaction knowing where I come from and who has shaped my family history.
I feel like I am and even my children are members of “the small” and would definitely like to be a part of “the mighty.” I can continue to be curious about starting a physical micro museum as well as continue to write in this space inside the Annie Lynn Club too. Why not? Writing a speech to express how you’d like less crammed busses and less greasy school lunch pizza…why not?
One of my favorite quotes is:
“If you can dream it, you can do it.” -Walt Disney
I like to think this is absolutely true.
Being able to share these stories locally and have the option for people to actually see these curated items would be amazing. It would all be rooted right where everything would be displayed. Everything I’d included would have a story with it. I could narrate and record the stories too, and then link it to the blog posts as well. I could offer tours, or classes working with others in the community that have a specialty to enrich and learn from. I could invite others to tell their local stories and give them a space to share their history, enriching the community.
I’m definitely not starting from scratch. I’ve been at this a while actually. In case you’re new here… welcome! Here’s a bit more history below on how I got to this point. Some of the text is taken from a previous post, just edited a bit.
Here we go!
I created a virtual online space called the “Annie Lynn Club,” this website, that started as just a blog in 2018. Every Monday night after I gave my boys a bath I’d sit down and reminisce, and write stories about my childhood. Feeling nostalgic felt like an escape from the day-to-day challenges of being a full-time, stay-at-home mom. It helped me answer questions about why I am the way I am, and who I am as a person. I had come to a point in my life where I really wanted to know, as I felt like I’d kinda lost my center and direction as a person.
I had a sneaking suspicion taking a trip down memory lane would help me re-find myself, or at the very least be something my boys would find fun to read some day. Either way, I made it my mission for over a year to write a blog post and publish at least every other week.
During the first year I published twenty six blog posts. To date, this is the 97th post!
Read my very first post here: Why I love the color, yellow.
After that first year my blog posts started to change. They became more about my songwriting. But at first my blogging wasn’t connected to my songwriting at all. It was more like what I now call my “micro-museum.” This includes nostalgic stories based on found objects, memorabilia and keepsakes I’ve kept over the years. All these stories contain detailed memories and personal narrative and are curated in the Annie Lynn Club. I recently posted a 1998 choir journal I digitized with photos from that adventure. Read that here: 1998 Europe Tour Choir Journal
Today, most of the earliest posts can only be accessed with a password, or what I call a “Golden Ticket.” These personal stories, “exhibits,” are available to “tour” for Annie Lynn Club members anytime in the members only area. To get access: Join Annie’s Club
Eventually, I started adding songwriting nights into my week and noticed that the more I wrote my stories the more it fueled my lyrics and song ideas. This connection was really exciting for me to discover, and made me want to keep going. So I did. Read: How going back to my roots led to my first song
Now I share all about my songwriting journey and projects I’m working on in what I call “Annie’s Adventure.” I send out personalized pen-pal letters (emails) to Annie Lynn Club members every other week. I love writing these and it’s a way for me to connect with folks interested in “making it an adventure” with me. Because I write them like we really are pen pals, folks can hit reply and write me back anytime. It’s optional of course, but totally fun! 😉 Read How “Annie’s Adventure” started
Wanna be my ✍🏼 pen-pal too? Fill out the form here.
And of course, if you feel like you could help in anyway make the micro-museum become a reality, I’d love to connect! Leave me a comment or visit my contact page. Thank you so much!
