The Fort Lupton Museum has a new face at the helm. But for anyone familiar with the school system, library or local history, it’s a familiar one. Longtime local volunteer, artist and historian DebraRay Thompson picks up where retiring curator Nancy Penfold left off, caretaking the city’s collection of artifacts while putting forth some of her own ideas for the future of the museum. It’s a natural fit for Thompson, who takes the community and her involvement to heart.
Thompson moved to Fort Lupton a little more than 18 years ago with husband Mason, taking up residence in a town she remembers from trips to visit family in Akron or up to Jackson Lake, when her family would stop in town at the A&W for root beer. Buying an admitted fixer-upper on Harrison Avenue at a bargain price meant the young couple could afford a nice home and property in a peaceful setting. It also meant that Thompson’s and Fort Lupton historian Nancy Penfold’s paths would cross, which happened soon after Thompson moved in.
“I was painting the basement stairs, and the doors were open, and she came over and hollered down the staircase, and said, ‘Hi, I’m Nancy Penfold,’” Thompson said. “She introduced me to the museum, which I fell in love with, and I grew to love Nancy as a person. She’s my mentor. She took me under her wing and took me to museum meetings, and traipsing all over the country around here – just fantastic.”
The relationship proved fortuistic for another of Thompson’s great loves, artistic pottery.
“This was another thing that Nancy was a part of,” Thompson said. “Her and her sister, Lois, were always wonderful about saying, ‘Go for your dreams.’ I was a teacher, and she said, ‘You love pottery, and you love to teach. Why don’t you go teach at College for Kids, at Aims Community College?”’
Scared to death, Thompson went for it, in the process meeting Darlene and Jack Long, who offered a spot in her shop for Thompson to teach pottery. The Aims College for Kids led to classes at Fort Lupton High School, a job steadily expanding over the past five years as the art staff dwindled from three to one at the high school, always supplanted by Thompson.
Thompson is a professional volunteer, if such a thing can be said. Since moving to Fort Lupton, she has dedicated countless hours to the community, in the museum, the public and school library and the throughout the Weld Re-8 school system.
“I have volunteered in the city of Fort Lupton for over 18 years,” Thompson said, at one point offering near 40-hour weeks to the school district, before taking on the museum job. “I only spend a couple hours a day, five or six hours a week at it now.”
These days, the vast bulk of Thompson’s time is spent at the museum, helping townspeople and school children research city facts and historical details about their homes, city founders and civic leaders, and the history of the area. Along with museum aide Diane Ash, a significant portion of her time is spent helping others get a handle on Fort Lupton’s past, of which there is a staggering amount. Another segment of time is devoted to getting her own handle on the museum, so she can move forward in a manner consistent both with the systems in place and those she plans to implement.
“I think any time someone takes over a new position, especially a position that has been filled for so many years, there are going to be lots and lots of changes, different thinking on things, that kind of thing always happens. The big thing was to get it organized so I can relate to the collection,” Thompson said, indicating the row of shelves her husband and son, Nathan, built to hold the rows of binders and files that comprise the museum data.
Another aspect Thompson is looking at is consolidating some of the museum’s artifacts, to better reflect the homogeneous nature of the Fort Lupton historic items versus warehousing regional items donated by well-meaning but overwhelming benefactors.
Located on a limited footprint on the upper floor of the building, the museum is literally overflowing with donations from all eras and multiple locales, the result of what Thompson attributes to the graciousness of Penfold and the nuances of museum operation, where many more things come through the door than the museum can hope to display or store.
“Museums walk a very fine line, where you want to take in just about everything and anything that has historical value that may have some significance in the environment in which the environment exists,” Thompson said. “If you take a collection in that is not significant to Fort Lupton, then that space is unavailable to those that come along later.”
Adding to the logistical difficulties, additional storage space isn’t an option at present, nor is using the entire building that houses the museum strictly for museum purposes.
“That’s a dream, but it’s not feasible right now,” Thompson said, of the possibility of opening the basement floor of the museum for displays or museum storage. The hitch is with the Fort Lupton Recreation Center, built to accommodate the varied needs of the community but at the cost of storage area.
“When we built the rec center, we went to the community to ask what they wanted in terms of recreation. As a community, we wanted everything, of course,” Thompson said.
Balancing cost versus desires, plans for the center came to fruition, capturing the essential elements that comprise the centerpiece of Fort Lupton’s recreational activity. The result was a showplace for recreation but very little space to house items needed by the recreation department. A good portion of those items wound up in the basement of the museum, formerly the home of the senior center. A trade off to be sure, but one in the best interest of the city’s seniors who now enjoy a portion of the new center.
Now, with the museum at capacity, some shuffling is in order, and that is a balancing act sure to test the tact of Thompson, who needs to consider the pertinence of each item in the collection against the available space, all while keeping the feelings of museum benefactors in mind.
“Some of the collection will indeed be adopted out,” Thompson said. “It may go to a historical society for one reason or another, it may go to another place, for other people to enjoy it, where it is more pertinent to their collection. But I am not here to throw anything away, or get rid of things”