Twenty years ago, the Pioneer Museum in Hot Springs, S.D., started the Focus on Fall River History Conference. At that time the museum was not doing well financially because of an over-exuberance of advertising. The president bought ads from everyone who asked and most ads didn’t generate traffic, or at least enough to break even. I had just joined the museum board and proposed we could put on an annual history conference. I was told I could do it, but would have to manage it all on my own. Only one other board member had attended a history conference and some of the others thought the high school swing choir could perform. We had to explain that it was not a talent show, but a local history event.

That first year I lined up 10 presenters, four of whom were in their 90s. Their stories made us all realize that they had positive outlooks on life. They had all gone through the Great Depression and all of the deprivations that entailed, yet their attitudes didn’t reflect any sadness about those days. Seemingly, their optimistic points of view led to their long lives. The four individuals were Willa Ritchey, Violet Biever, Caroline Curl and Everett Gillis. Curl lived to the age of 107 and was the oldest South Dakotan when she died. At Gillis’ 100^th birthday party he was asked the age old question, “To what do you attribute your long life?”

His reply, “I never worried about anything that I couldn’t do anything about.” He lived to 102.

Ritchey told about traveling here on an immigrant car with her family. She made it to age 94. Biever was compelled by her children to wear an alert necklace so she could get help if she fell or otherwise was in need. In the early autumn of 2010, at the age of 98, she was out raking leaves in her yard when she bumped the alert button. The Oelrichs ambulance responded quickly and found her working.

What an auspicious start to the history conference. And the museum made enough money get our financials back in order.

My dad, Russell Wyatt, was another speaker and he is now 98, also with a positive attitude.

If your local museum is looking for a way to create more interest, you might want to consider a history conference. If you have questions, I would welcome them. We’ve had history about fur trapping, Badger Clark, the Chautauqua Movement which led to naming Hot Springs’ Chautauqua Park, the golf course, hospitals (including the West River Crippled Children’s Hospital for polio patients), churches, the buffalo at Wind Cave, cattle shipping and trails, ranching, Carnegie Library, a U.S. Cavalry Bugler demonstration, Leland Case from Hot Springs (founder of Westerners International), Calamity Jane in Hot Springs, and many more.

We have found that the public is motivated to learn about local history and you might find the same.

Sanders is a national-award winning columnist whose internet latchstring is out at peggy@peggysanders.com.