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Meet Lynnita Brown
Lynnita Aldridge Brown is one of the three original founders (1984) of the Douglas County Museum. She has
been the volunteer administrator of the museum since it opened its doors in 1988. As the director, she is
responsible for overseeing the daily operations of the museum. She serves as the museum's grant writer,
exhibit designer, public spokesperson, and treasurer. She is also a museum trustee.
Lynnita is a 1968 graduate of Tuscola High. She received an Associates degree in history from Parkland
Community College in 1982; a Bachelor of Arts degree (cum laude) from Eastern Illinois University in
Charleston in 1986; and a Masters degree in history from Eastern Illinois University in 1988. She attended the
PhD program at the University of Illinois, Urbana campus, until her health failed in 1991. She is the mother
of one daughter, and a former foster mother to many children.
Her background in the museum field comes from courses in Historical Administration at Eastern Illinois
University; from working on a special project for the Illinois State Museum in Springfield in 1987; from
serving on the college work study staff at the World Heritage Museum on the University of Illinois campus; and
from on-the-job experience at the Douglas County Museum.
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Meet Jeri Smith
Jeri joined the volunteer staff of the Douglas County Museum in 1989. As the museum's Jarman Baby Project
coordinator, she oversees the processing of all incoming Jarman babies and enters updated information in the
museum's computer. Jeri's work at the museum also includes a wide range of general clerical duties, including
generating mass mailings, operating a copy and folding machine, answering the telephone, and greeting
customers. Jeri also handles front door ticket sales during special event fund-raisers.
As a former farmwife, Jeri maintained a household and reared a son and daughter; operated farm equipment;
cooked; did truck gardening; and raised poultry. She was also a secretary and receptionist in the office of
Dr. Gerald Mathias in Tuscola (1968-69), and a nurse's aide at Douglas Nightingale Manor Nursing Home from
1968 to 1972.
Jeri graduated from Newman Township High School in 1942. From 1942 to 1944, she took nurse's training at
the Paris Hospital in Paris, Illinois. She has been a member of the board of trustees of the Museum
Association of Douglas County since 1991.
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Meet Ethel Louise Kauppala
Ethel Louise is the president of the board of the Museum Association of Douglas County. A former Green
Thumber employees whose assigned work station was at the Douglas County Museum from 1989 to 1998, Ethel Louise
now volunteers her time assisting with Jarman babies and customer relations. She assists with ticket sales
during special events. She answers the telephone and greets museum visitors, and assists with mass mailings
and other clerical needs of the museum.
A "Rosie-the-Riveteer" from 1942 to 1944 in the Kaiser Shipyards at Vancouver, Washington, she returned to
her native Newman, Illinois where she was a clerk at the Grab-It-Here Foodliner from 1955 to 1978. She also
reared two daughters. In 1978, she transcribed taped oral history interviews for the State of Illinois' Oral
History for Aging Project. She served as a Green Thumb employee for the City of Newman from 1979 to 1989,
handing water billing and bookkeeping. At the Douglas County Museum, her work included clerical duties,
accessioning artifacts, and caring for membership records.
Ethel Louise graduated from Newman Township High School in 1942. She then attended Brown's Business College
in Decatur, Illinois. Since joining the museum staff as a Green Thumb worker and volunteer, she has
participated in museum-related workshops, including: accessioning, volunteerism, and collections management.
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Meet Jean Aldridge Copas
Jean began her volunteer work in the Douglas County Museum in 1989. She is ever-present at special events
in the museum, volunteering hundreds of hours in the museum's kitchen. When there are no meals or treats to
prepare, Jean brings her organizational skills to another area of the museum's operations--collections care.
As the museum's collections care manager, Jean has donated hundreds of hours organizing existing and incoming
artifacts in the museum's historical collection. She accessions (puts identification numbers on) artifacts,
gently cleans and mends those items that need special care, and organizes them in proper storage containers.
She also greets visitors, assists in mass mailings, and does a myriad of other jobs in the museum.
The mother of four grown daughters, Jean's work experience outside of the home includes assembly-line work
in shoe factories in Missouri, food preparation in Tuscola's Williams Cafe (circa 1963 to 1967), and co-owner
of Aldridge Jewelry from 1967 to 1995. She is a past residents' assistant at Brookstone Estates in Tuscola,
but now devotes her "spare" time to assisting her daughter Lynnita with the operation of Aldridge's
collectible shop in downtown Tuscola.
Jean received a high school diploma from the Downing, Missouri school system in 1958. She attended computer
workshop classes at Mattoon Public Library in 2003, and earned a Food Service Sanitation certificate from the
State of Illinois in 2004.
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Meet Donna Thode
This devoted volunteer began her work in the Douglas County Museum in 1994. Although she assists with
photocopying, mass mailings, janitorial work, special events, answering the telephone and more, Donna's main
area of expertise in the museum is in the library/archives. Donna assists visiting genealogists with their
document research, and prepares and files hundreds of obituaries, marriage and birth announcements for storage
and easy retrieval in the museum's extensive "Vertical File."
A graduate of Broadlands high school in 1949, Donna stayed on her parents' farm, caring for them until
their death. She moved to Tuscola in 1968 and began work in the dietary department of Jarman Memorial
Hospital. She worked at the Douglas Nightingale Nursing Home until 1993, when she retired.
She likes to sew, embroidery and collect souvenir spoons, and she also keeps a scrapbook.
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Volunteers Extraordinaire
Besides the regular volunteers on the museum's staff, there are other past and present volunteers who have
been particularly loyal to the Douglas County Museum. Among them are the following:
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In Memory of Pauline Underwood
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(Click picture for a larger view)
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On February 23, 2004, the museum’s volunteer staff became less one with the death of Pauline Jewell
Underwood. She had been a volunteer in the Douglas County Museum since 1988. It is not easy to write of her
death. She was very dear to all of us, and there are times that we are at a loss without her.
We mean that literally. Pauline could always find the thing that was misplaced in the museum. If it had
moved from here to there, she knew where it was. She knew who donated what. She could identify historic
objects that others could not. Her big green car parked in the museum lot after everyone else was gone was a
sure sign that the museum would be cleaner the next day than it was the day before. If a trash bag was by the
planter, it meant that she was weeding the flowers. If a ladder was by the window, it meant that she would
have a bottle of glass cleaner in her hand when she came out the door. She was the museum’s historian, keeping
scrapbooks with news clippings and photographs pertaining to the Douglas County Museum’s many and varied
activities.
She wrote letters to donors, assisted visiting genealogists in our library, sorted documents, and helped
with Cabin Chatter mailings. She literally helped to build the interior walls of the museum when we were in
the remodeling stage of our history. She made gallons of potato soup for our Founders Night fund-raisers. She
trimmed bushes, scooped snow and occasionally mowed (not with our approval, but she did it anyway). She popped
popcorn for our dances, made a mean carrot Jell-O, and answered the telephone. She dressed mannequins, made
terrific slaw for our Jonah Fish Frys (with no “hot” core in it, by golly), cooked the best ever fudge for Tea
Dances, and accepted items into the museum collection. She gave guided tours, helped put exhibits together,
accessioned artifacts, and ran the copy machine. She pampered and adored the “museum baby” (Celena Sommer)
from the time that she arrived at the museum in a wicker basket until that baby was taller than Pauline. She
attended museum-related workshops, taking training in accessioning and paper preservation. She stood staunchly
beside the rest of the museum staff in times of trouble and rejoiced with us during times of triumph.
Obituary
Pauline Jewell Underwood was born April 26, 1919 in Baldwinsville, Illinois. She attended country school
in Kansas, Illinois, Redmon school in Redmon, and Mayo public school in Paris, Illinois. In 1938 she was an
order clerk and operated a steam press in Morrison’s Dry Cleaning Service, Paris.
She married Howard J. Underwood on March 24, 1939 at Paris. They were parents of four sons, Gerald,
Phillip, Michael, and Sammy. Sammy died while in his childhood and Pauline forever grieved for him.
From 1939 to 1978, she was a farmwife and mother, rearing her sons and helping on the farm. She did
bookkeeping for the farm and took care of the household accounts. She prepared meals for harvest help, did
truck gardening, raised poultry, and operated farm vehicles. From 1968 to 1989, she worked in McCall’s
Variety Store in Newman where her duties included supervision of house wares, toys, and the men’s
department, checking in merchandise, pricing, displaying, and inventory control. She was also in charge of
department window displays for new and seasonal merchandise. She was a cash register clerk and did light
housekeeping as well. After retiring from the variety store, she devoted much of her time to the Douglas
County Museum, logging thousands of volunteer hours there, as well as hundreds of travel miles on behalf of
the museum.
In the last days of her life, Pauline was very ill and was hospitalized in Urbana. From there she was
transferred to the Newman Nursing Home, where she died on February 23, 2004. She is buried in the Murdock
Cemetery north of Murdock.
There are really no words that we can find to tell our members and website visitors how genuinely special
this woman was to her fellow volunteers in the Douglas County Museum. The words are in our heart, but when we
try to speak them, the tears come again and our sorrow at losing her is revisited. When this happens, our loss
is just too painful to think about and bear.
Pauline Underwood will forever be an integral part of the Douglas County Museum. |
All of the members of the staff of the Douglas
County Museum are volunteers who collectively donate thousands of hours to the general operation of the museum
and its historic preservation efforts.
