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08/16/2021 08:14 AMWhen you spend 32 years as curator and site administrator for an historic museum, you’re bound to mark milestones, and even make a little history along the way. On July 30, Michael A. McBride officially retired as curator and site administrator at Henry Whitfield State Museum, a role he’s loved since his first day on the job in 1989.
Mike was early in his administrative career when he was tapped to run the storied Guilford site, which features the 1639 stone house built for Guilford founder Rev. Henry Whitfield.
“I had a short résumé, but it was big on being a problem solver and a trouble shooter and turning places around,” says Mike of clinching the job.
As a graduate student at Northeastern University in Boston, Mike put in an immersive season at Mystic Seaport Museum. Next, he was hired, right out of grad school at Boston’s Paul Revere House in 1985. After serving as the museum’s assistant director for several years, Mike moved to Virginia to manage the 90-acre Sully Historic Site of congressman Richard B. Lee, uncle of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
A Meriden native, Mike’s game plan was to return to work in his home state within three to five years. While still in his 20s, he’d lost a couple of close contests for state jobs—one for director of the Museum of Connecticut History at the Connecticut State Library and one for Parks superintendent at Gillette Castle. But that also put him on the state’s hiring radar.
“Because I had taken the civil service test for those two jobs, I was on a list,” says Mike, who was in Virginia when the State Historic Preservation Office came calling with the Whitfield opening.
“I jumped at opportunity,” he recalls. “Especially after seeing the museum and all the potential it had and all the things that needed to be done. Back when we were all young and had boundless energy, nothing seemed impossible! So I got hired to work in my home state. And I was hired to work in Guilford, which is such an awesome place, with awesome people and awesome historical resources. To use a whaling analogy, I buckled in and went on one of those Nantucket sleigh rides.”
Even though it was 1989, much of the museum and its operations were still “living in the past,” in terms of technology, limited utilities, minimal security, poor storage of collections, and poor care of the buildings and grounds, says Mike.
“My first day on the job, I sat down at my desk which had a phone from the 1960s,” says Mike.
He notes it was also the museum’s single line for voice, security, and alarm systems, “so if something went off when you were on the phone, it just canceled everything out!”
His other communication device: an IBM Selectric typewriter and carbon paper.
“None of it was necessarily the fault of the people who worked there,” says Mike.
Rather, it was typical for an entity with “limited people and a staff that has limited sway over budget and staffing. That’s the bane of existence of these places, trying to do everything with nothing. So it was a very typical small historical museum: small staff, no money.”
The museum’s two part-time staffers worked with Mike to share their knowledge of the collection and site history before each retired, a few years apart. In 1994, Mike hired assistant curator Michelle Parrish (who now succeeds him as curator and site administrator) and in 2000, they welcomed staffer Chris Collins as museum guide. For more than two decades, the three have always worked together as a team and in collaboration with other groups, organizations, and volunteers.
“I’m very excited for Michelle and Chris and the future here,” says Mike. “The successes that happened over the last 32 years are equally their success. In many cases, it was me just developing a concept with them and turning them loose on their own projects. So I feel just really great about the museum going forward. We have been working with the other three state museums and our director in Hartford and there will be bigger, better, and more exciting things coming.”
Among what’s to come is continuing a deeper look at all of Guilford’s history.
“We can’t look at the community as being an island,” says Mike. “Over the generations, Guilford has been exposed to and participated in slavery. There’s also the treatment of indigenous people. And that’s one of the things I feel the Whitfield Museum was really making in-roads in providing—a more comprehensive picture of making those links and creating a dialogue.”
A Look Back
One of the first efforts Mike undertook was re-imagining the Visitors Center. By 1996, working with Michelle and “petty-cashing our way along,” some significant changes were phased in.
“We got our gift shop and ticketing out of the Whitfield House and into that building, and that also allowed the public to finally use restrooms,” says Mike, who also hauled a discarded kitchen island back to the grounds to paint up as the gift shop’s first cash register counter.
“We really got organized then,” says Mike. “We had two galleries, and we had a couple of small exhibits in those galleries.”
Eventually, with assistance from Michelle and Chris, the public buildings also grew to include the Education Center in the barn. Displays in the Whitfield House museum were also elevated.
“We went from one light bulb in each room and one laminated, tight label to a multi-layered approach where you have the big story, the subplot and the objects,” says Mike. “And they’re all understandable, to all ages, because the staff has been trained, when interacting, to present information and have dialogue at that person’s or group’s level, so nobody’s left out.”
One of Mike’s guiding points with staff and volunteers has always been how they work with the visiting public.
“Nobody’s experience is inconsequential,” he says. “That’s how they’re experiencing and learning and enjoying the museum—they’re making their own personal connections. So while there’s a huge number of stories and themes that the museum can address, you never know, when someone comes in, what might trigger something in their memory. A Leete family descendant from Virginia finally gets there, and they’re standing in front Gov. William Leete’s chair, and they’re crying. Or someone coming in to research their genealogy and they find a connection in our files that unlocks this whole new family line.”
History-Making Moments
When the main exhibit area in the Visitor’s Center opened with a bang nearly 20 years ago, it featured a display on Guilford’s 1802 Faulkner’s Island Lighthouse. The museum staff worked in collaboration with Joel Helander of Faulkner’s Light Brigade, founded in 1991 as a Guilford Preservation Alliance effort fighting island erosion threatening the historic site.
“The Faulkner’s Island collaboration with the Faulkner’s Light Brigade was our first major exhibit,” says Mike. “We had it installed and ready to go, and it opened in 2002. That exhibit got national recognition and also won awards in New England, Connecticut, and nationally through some of the professional organizations. Unfortunately, we had to close it in 2003.”
In June 2003, Governor John Rowland enacted a wide swath of layoffs across programs including the state museum system, forcing the shut-down of the Henry Whitfield State Museum.
“The governor was holding a whole bunch of different agencies and programs hostage to get the budget he wanted, and one of the things he did was massive layoffs. Our budget was never big, so it was not really cut, but we lost Michelle—she was laid off,” says Mike. “Which made it impossible to operate the site, with just two people. All the things she was working on, I had to pick up. And also, once the place closed, we had to secure it and protect it. And we didn’t know what the future was going to be.”
Assuming they, like many others, were to be laid off, “I guess we went rogue,” says Mike of himself and Chris.
“We just figured our mission is to preserve and protect the place, and if we’re going to lose our jobs, we’re going to go out very vocal,” says Mike. “And so we hung black bunting on the building. We raised black flags on the flag poles. We even had a permanent sign made for the gate that had the governor’s phone number on it.”
Mike and Chris also handed out leaflets at the highly-attended Expo on the Town Green.
“Again, we thought we were being fired,” says Mike. “And certainly, I felt it wouldn’t hurt in the future, if I was looking for a new job, for people to see how passionate we were about the place.”
Their actions did not go unnoticed at the state level, including the museum’s supervisory offices.
“There were people, including people in our agency, who were not happy about that,” says Mike. “But I like to think that the publicity we got, and of course, the great support from the public and the historic preservation community, helped, and that we were one story in the bigger story of the governor finally backtracking on all of that. And Michelle eventually came back to us.”
In 2004, Michelle returned and the museum re-opened, just in time to mark its 100th anniversary and celebrate its new National Historic Landmark designation.
“Being designated a National Historic Landmark was an effort I had picked up on, and really tied into the new interpretive themes we were working on, particularly historic preservation and the Colonial revival,” says Mike. “We were able to shepherd that through the National Parks Service and through Congress. So that was a really another proud day in the history of the museum. It happened about the same time that we were celebrating the 100th anniversary of the museum officially opening in 1904.”
The museum was founded in 1899, but didn’t open its doors until 1904. The 2004 celebration event included unveiling a large bronze statue of Henry Whitfield, commissioned by a descendant working with Mike. As no known images of Whitfield exist, Mike decided to let DNA do the talking, giving the sculptor the descendant’s photo for reference.
A Second Home
Spending 32 years of a 37-year career at the same location made the Henry Whitfield Museum not only a second home to Mike, but to his family, too. His daughter, Finn, now 20, was in a stroller at the Whitfield statue dedication. Finn started volunteering at the museum at the age of 5. His wife, also named Michelle, has volunteered her talent and time to assist through the years, as have the McBride’s twins, Tom and Colleen, now 14 and entering high school.
“I’ve worked weekends my entire life, so I’ve missed a lot of family time over the years,” says Mike. “So it’s kind of good I’ll get to go through all four years of high school with my twins and do stuff with them that I couldn’t do with Finn.”
The McBrides have lived in Wallingford during most of Mike’s years with the museum.
“A lot of people assume I live in Guilford, because I spend so much time there,” says Mike.
He’s also gotten to know and collaborate with many in town through the years, including those from the town’s other historic societies and museums, those involved in special programs such as Guilford’s 350th and 375th celebrations, as well as town leaders and many others connected with Guilford’s library, schools, and churches.
“I can’t even try to list them all. I just feel so blessed to have shared the experience of working with, and learning from, all of those people,” says Mike.
He’s also grateful for college collaborations that undertook many archaeological digs on the grounds; including Connecticut College (two seasons), Yale University (seven seasons), and ongoing work in recent years with Southern Connecticut State University.
“They found an incredible amount of things this year that were just amazing and that we’re still trying to figure out,” says Mike.
After some time off in retirement, Mike hopes to come back to volunteer working with new software that can link yield amounts, types of artifacts, and locations of findings to build a substrata horizon, eventually creating 3-D ground level view of the connected sections to help determine domestic and commercial uses over the years.
Back to Visit and Volunteer
Mike knows he will enjoy coming back to visit and volunteer with the museum and encourages others to consider volunteering, too.
“We never have a lot of time to do research, except when we’re putting a new exhibit together, or have a new collection item on exhibit. But there’s no lack of projects for volunteers and interns,” he says. “I’m sure I’ll be there to help—once I wake up from my long sleep after retirement! There are all these wonderful topics that have always been on a list, and we’ve never had a chance to do them.”
Mike is also secure in the knowledge the museum is being left in good hands.
“It’s always good when you leave, to know that you’re leaving it in a great place. I think a lot of that is because of what Michelle and Chris and I did working together, including the volunteers that we’ve had over the years,” he says.
He also credits Michelle much of the museum’s evolution into social media in the digital age. For her part, Michelle is planning a bit of a fall send-off for Mike at the museum, to which the public will be invited (look for updates on Facebook @HenryWhitfieldStateMuseum).
Mike treasures the experience of being a mentor to Michelle and Chris and now, for many years, watching them mentor others.
“I’m most proud of the fact that when people came to the museum, and still come to museum, they’re getting a one-on-one dialogue with very knowledgeable staff—people who are as interested in hearing the people’s experiences and ideas as we are providing them with information,” he says. “And that’s going to continue forward.”