A DECADE FLYS BY WHEN YOU’RE HAVING FUN
It’s been more than a decade, since I talked on the phone to Dixie Huckabee. At that time, I was editor of the Redlands Area Historical Society’s Newsletter. I remember reading an article in the Daily Facts that the Historical Glass Museum was planning to move the museum to Yucaipa. With the approval of the RAHS Board, Rosemary and I talked to the HGMF Board promising to lend our support to the Glass Museum if they would agree to stay in Redlands.
After that meeting Fredamay Smith asked us to become HGMF members. We soon became members of the HGMF board, and became active in doing our part to make the museum what it is today. When the term of the then HGMF President’s term expired, I was elected to become the museum’s next leader.
It’s hard to believe that in June of this year my term as HGMF President expires.
Looking back over the past decade, a lot has happened, and we have been fortunate enough to have more than 6,000 additional pieces of beautiful American glass donated to the museum’s existing collection. Donations have come from as far as the East Coast to our quaint West Coast museum.
During the last decade the museum has been restored and painted on the inside and outside. The 1905 building has been earthquake retrofitted, all of the ceiling lights have been replaced with vintage glass hanging lamps. An additional room for display of glass has been added by turning a storeroom into ‘Yesterday’s Kitchen’.
We have been fortunate to have Huell Howser visit the museum on two occasions. Many visitors say they’ve learned about the museum when they saw it on Huell Howser’s TV program. This unique, little museum, in Redlands, California, now has one of the largest collections world-wide of American manufactured glass. Nearly every American maker of household glassware is represented in the museum’s glass collection. In the last ten years, twenty-six custom built, locked, lighted, and mirrored display cases have been added to highlight our growing collection of donated glass.
Personally, one of the accomplishments for which I’m most proud is saving an 1888 Victorian two-story house from being burned as a training exercise for the Redlands Fire Department. We were able to move, restore, and sell the Andersen house, making enough profit to make all updates to the museum.
Virtual tour click here: http://GlassMuseums.com