The Adirondack History Museum Board of Trustees has elected three new members to its ranks for the 2016 season. The new board members are Janet MacDougal Cross, Laura Steenburg and Gerald Zahavi.
Cross currently serves as the Elizabethtown town historian. Upon her retirement from teaching in 2008, she and her husband, Steven, returned to her family home in Elizabethtown. Since then she has become a regular volunteer at the Museum and the Elizabethtown Thrift Shop, and remains active in the United Church of Christ, Daughters of the American Revolution and Daughters of 1812. She continues a family tradition of involvement with the museum board, as both her grandfather, Harry M. MacDougal, and father, Allister MacDougal, served on the board.
Steenburg was a longtime seasonal visitor in Lake Placid before moving to Elizabethtown in 2005 and residing at the historic “Stony Water” farmhouse, where she ran a small art gallery until 2010. She recently relocated to Moriah, where she resides at “Bat Bay Farm,” an iconic property due to a classic historic brick home. Steenburg’s experience with entrepreneurship, marketing, sales and business development will help the museum board to define and expand its mission and outreach. She brings to the board her love of history and art and total passion for the tradition and heritage of the Adirondacks.
Zahavi, who lives on a hillside overlooking Lincoln Pond, is professor of history and director of both the Public History and Documentary Studies programs at the University at Albany, State University of New York, where he has been since 1985. His research and writing projects focus on 20th century U.S. social and economic history and oral/aural history. Zahavi is the author of Workers, Managers, and Welfare Capitalism: The Shoemakers and Tanners of Endicott Johnson, 1890-1950 (University of Illinois Press), numerous articles on the history of labor, capital and American radicalism and editor of more than a dozen business and labor history archival microform publications. Zahavi is also a media producer engaged in a variety of audio (radio), video and on-line projects.
The Adirondack History Museum seeks to serve as Essex County’s center for the stories that reveal the roots and values of its people. The museum will open for its 2016 season on Memorial Day.
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