May 2019
Save Our Stories. It’s pretty simple.
When we created our 2019 campaign, we wanted to encapsulate our mission in a succinct, powerful way. We asked ourselves what it is that we do, each day, every day, day in, day out. And then it hit us; we save our stories. We save them, we share them, and we try to provoke thought, conversation, and meaningful reflection to how our stories connect us as a community. When we interpret individual stories as part of the whole, we are able to educate in a manner greater than only seeing what came before.
It also opens more pathways for support that a mere fundraising campaign. We’ll be asking for more than money this year, we’ll be asking you to share your history, your connections, your stories about this wonderful community we call Hampton Roads. We invite you to be involved in any way you can. Your donations will be crucial for allowing the institution to grow, to flourish, and to continue our mission. It’s no small feat to raise the $100,000 needed to poise the organization for a strong future. Every dollar will matter.
Your stories will be just as important. Your refections of a life along the coast, of growing up in Virginia Beach, of being part of this community by the sea. Stories old, stories new, stories first hand or passed down, they all matter. That’s why the Save Our Stories campaign includes our Oral History Project. It’s easy to get involved! Just reach out with an email, william@vbsrm.org, or you can use the contact form. You just get to sit down and share your memories. Whether on camera, or not, we’ll help you with questions. It won’t take that long, and those cherished nuggets, those wonderful intimate memories of people, places, and times worth sharing, can be preserved for future generations.
Perhaps you can contribute photographs to the campaign. We are always searching for photos of Virginia Beach and the surrounding Tidewater region. Too many of these treasures stay unseen in attics, and worse yet, get thrown away in the next generation’s clean out. It’s easy for us to digitize your photographs, so you and your family will still be able to hold onto the originals. Of course, if that box of photos is not something you want to keep, we would be thrilled to bring them into the museum’s collection.
And don’t forget about the cool, old stuff. Brochures, postcards, hats and pins. That old snow globe that’s still worth shaking. So when you are going through the closet, the attic, the old boxes. Please keep in mind that those tiny keepsakes have the power to share a great deal of history and meaning to our guests.
We can’t do it without you. We can fix up the building, but the stories are yours. As a community, that’s our true treasure.
Please take the time to donate, to offer your stories, to even volunteer to help us. The mission is simple.
Save Our Stories.
William