2005 Governor's Humanities Awards Conferees

On a brisk afternoon in November, the Missouri Humanities Council was pleased to confer the annual Governor's Humanities Awards at the Missouri Governor's Mansion to these outstanding Missourians:

Neita Geilker, Christopher Harris, and Elaine Koepke, Liberty
Community Heritage Award

The Century House Project, proposed by Neita Geilker in 2002 to the Liberty Historic District Review Commission, began to identify and authenticate all of the hundred-year-old houses and buildings in Liberty.

Through promotion of owner plaques, and the publication of a poster, then the book, Liberty’s Living Legacy: 19th Century Buildings 1830-1899, these awardees have raised the consciousness of the Liberty community about its architectural treasures. Publication of the book in 2004 coincided with the 175th anniversary of Liberty’s incorporation as a city.

In addition to serving as spokesperson for the project, Geilker contributed text for the book and served as editor. Koepke, a Hallmark artist, photographed the houses, and designed the book, poster layout, and cover. Harris, who proposed the idea of the book, did authentication research and also provided text.

Neita Geilker is a former instructor of English at William Jewell College. After completing her Ph.D. at the University of Missouri Kansas City, she developed her own consulting company, Geilker & Associates, and has given workshops and seminars across the country and internationally.

Neita and Don Geilker enjoy their 1890 Queen Anne Victorian house, and have also raised two children who both owned turn-of-the-century homes in Liberty. This first person experience helped shape Neita's appreciation and interest in these fine homes, especially in the four historic districts of Liberty.

Chris Harris was born and raised in rural Liberty. History has always been a part of his life--growing up he would listen to stories of his family from his parents, grandparents and other family members. His family has been in Missouri since 1838.

After graduating from Liberty High School Chris furthered his education at William Jewell College, majoring in History and Religion. His list of accomplishments includes contributor to the 175th Anniversary of Liberty commemorative book, the documentary "Liberty: Settlement to Suburb," the Liberty Landing trail marker at the Fountain Bluff's Sports Complex, the book "Liberty's Living Legacy," Atkins-Johnson house living history museum, and docent for several of the historic walking tours. This fall and winter he will lead monthly seminars on historical topics ranging from how to research property and houses, to the history of Liberty. He is married to Rebecca, a most understanding and gracious wife who is a surgical tech at Liberty Hospital. They have two sons, Andrew who is 9 and Thomas who is 2 months.

Scott Huegerich and Bob Miano, St. Louis
Community Heritage Award

Scott Huegerich and Bob Miano's feature-length documentary film, The World's Greatest Fair, had its World Premiere with a sold-out audience of 4,500 people at the St. Louis' historic Fox Theatre, and received a rave four-star review from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The film went on to a summer and fall of sold-out screenings at both the St. Louis International Film Festival and at the Missouri History Museum, and was broadcast locally by KMOV-TV, St. Louis. The film was also provided for a fundraiser to benefit the Audrain County Historical Society in Mexico, MO--one of the providers of photos for the film.

The documentary is an in-depth view of a defining moment in St. Louis history which features hundreds of never-before-seen images, the first high definition transfer of rare film footage of The Fair, and interviews with nationally recognized historians.

Co-directors/producers Huegerich and Miano, along with 150 volunteers, spent over a year and a half carefully crafting this wonderful documentary. Through months of research, digital scanning, restoration of hundreds of rare images from the archives of the Missouri Historical Society, and many long hours of editing, the production team tirelessly worked with one goal in mind-to preserve the history of the 1904 World's Fair and reach national audiences of all ages and from all walks of life.

www.civilpictures.org
www.theworldsgreatestfair.com
www.miano.tv

Dottie Dallmeyer, Jefferson City
Community Heritage Award

Described as a driving force for the Humanities in Jefferson City, Dottie Dallmeyer has worked tirelessly to preserve and restore historic buildings in the Jefferson City area. She devotes countless hours educating others and celebrating the history of the area, including the historic East side. She serves as a member of the Jefferson City Historic Preservation Commission and as a docent at the Cole County Historical Society Museum. Dallmeyer is the Honorary Historian Emeritus for Historic City of Jefferson and a member of the East Side Neighborhood Development Association.

She and her late father, noted local historian Dr. Joseph S. Summers, published a pictorial history of Jefferson City in 2000. This book showcases the history of the capital city from 1826 through the flood of 1993 with over 200 captioned, vintage photographs.

Dallmeyer's community involvement also includes roles as organizer of the Capitol City Jazzfest, Jefferson City Lewis & Clark Bicentennial Commission task force, and co-coordinator for the local Heritage Week.

In 2001, the Zonta Club of Jefferson City honored Dottie for her community service as a "Woman of Achievement."

Dallmeyer is also an educator, founder of the Jefferson City Moreau Montessori School, and currently serving as a Director. She also works with homebound students, and has been in charge of the Grace Episcopal Church Nursery for the past 17 years.

Dottie earned a B.S. in clothing and textiles, a B.S. in Child Development, a B.S. in Elementary Education, and is currently working on a Masters in Historic Preservation.

She resides in Jefferson City, with her husband, Dannie L. Ricks. She is a proud mother of 4, and grandmother of 4.

Russ and Rosemary Burcham, Kennett
Public Involvement Award

Russ and Rosemary Burcham have captured life in their Dunklin County community through "Time for Talk," a locally originated public affairs program on Time Warner Cable. Unique in the U.S. for its daily frequency, for its continuous 30 year existence, and for its clear focus on community betterment.

Russ shoots and edits the footage and Rosemary, the interviewer and commentator, uses the microphone and her friendly conversational style to bring to life the subject of a particular broadcast. Most of their episodes feature ordinary folks, places, and events in Dunklin County. A few of their programs come from trips taken overseas, bringing bits of the world back to the Bootheel.

The Burchams (Rosemary, 79, and Russ, 80) were born and raised in the Bootheel of Missouri. Since its beginning in 1975, Time for Talk has documented the area's change from swampland to fertile farmland, including the interlude of the Timber Boom Town. Through many interviews with old-timers and "in-the-field" reporting, everyday life in the Bootheel area has been captured for all time.

Thousands of program hours of magnetic video tape is being converted to digital format, and a future home in the county library, in order for the shows to remain accessible to scholars and the public, and for anyone who wants to see and hear "what great-great granddad had to say back in 2005." These programs are a priceless record of local legend and lore.

Russ Burcham is a retired Dentist of forty years. More than forty of those years have been spent serving as an elder in the Slicer Street Church of Christ in Kennett, Missouri. For the past sixteen years he and Rosemary have spent three to six months annually in foreign mission work. He and Rosemary have taught English and Bible in International Christian University, Vienna, Austria, in the Baxter Institute of Biblical and Cultural Studies, Tagucigalpa, Honduras, and in the Linguistic Institute, Minsk, Belarus.

Russ and Rosemary have been instrumental in the establishment of several churches in many countries previously identified as Soviet Bloc countries. Rosemary is a registered Medical Technician but left that work to become a housewife and mother of five children. During this time she has been active in church and community affairs, speaking regularly before civic and church groups.

Dr. Burcham served for twenty-two years as a member of the Board of Directors of the Kennett Public Schools.

Time for Talk has received the singular Chamber of Commerce Community Service Award, only two of which have been presented in the history of the city of Kennett. In 1982 Russ was awarded a Certificate of Merit for public service by the Senate of the State of Missouri. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Kennett National Bank, Kennett, Missouri and for 25 years has served as a member of the Board of Trustees of Harding University, Searcy, Arkansas.

Joellen Gamp McDonald, Richmond Heights
Public Involvement Award

Joellen McDonald has been selected to receive a 2005 Governor's Humanities Public Involvement Award, conferred by the Missouri Humanities Council. This award recognizes a person who has been exemplary in developing public interest in the activities of a museum, historic site or historical society, or who has generated exceptional public interest in history or literature in some other way.

As vice president and curator of the Richmond Heights Historical Society, McDonald has almost single-handedly revived an organization devoted to the collection and documentation of the Richmond Heights community. Her recent efforts focused on Hadley Township Neighborhood, one of the oldest African American communities in St. Louis County, created in 1907 when Evens-Howard brickworks developed subsidized housing for its predominately black workers.

McDonald prodded the community conscience in the face of continued commercial zoning and investment, galvanizing the neighbors into a cogent voice. Through a letter-writing campaign, she helped bring awareness of the community's significance to developers.

She partnered with 8th grade students from St. Luke's Catholic School to create An Oral History Project: The People from the Hill which documented hundreds of photos and historical memorabilia. McDonald has brought life to local history through exhibits and Society-sponsored lectures, and represented the local community in its planning with the MO Department of Transportation.

Michael Dickey, Arrow Rock
Book Award


As Historic Site Administrator of Arrow Rock State Historic Site since 1995, Michael Dickey has contributed significantly to the preservation and interpretation of historic buildings landscapes in Arrow Rock, and to the exhibits and themes at the State Historical Site Visitors' Center.

Arrow Rock: Crossroads of the Missouri Frontier is described as "a remarkable and fascinating narrative that tells the history of the diverse people who lived in the Arrow Rock area, and explains how they influenced nineteenth century Missouri's society, politics, culture, and economy."

Sources used by the author to document the important part American Indians and African Americans played in the history of Arrow Rock include artifacts and field notes of archaeological excavations, and manuscripts, interviews, and reports from research projects conducted by scholars and students of the University of Missouri at St. Louis and William Woods College, with financial assistance provided by the Missouri Humanities Council.

The concluding chapter of Dickey's book is devoted to Arrow Rock's place in historic preservation.

Scott Kerr and R. H. Dick, Webster Groves, Kirkwood
Book Award


An American Art Colony: The Art and Artists of Sainte Genevieve, Missouri, 1930-1940 is a historical and pictorial journey through the eyes of colony painters. Their chosen subjects are not of the traditional bucolic landscape, instead they portray the human condition both in terms of political upheaval and that of depression era events. Authors Scott Kerr and R.H. Dick take a comprehensive look at the colony and summer art school, its luminaries and students, and what they contributed to the town and larger community.

A graduate of Indiana University, Scott Kerr has been professionally engaged in the art world for more than 20 years. As the president of McCaughen & Burr Fine Arts, Kerr is involved in the daily valuation and acquisiton of paintings. His gallery specializes in both American and European art with an emphasis on American regional art of the 1930s through the 1950s. He is actively involved with his community and has been recognized for his leadership in urban renewal, his work with youth, and his support of community programs.

R.H. Dick is a native Missourian. Born in Kansas City, he holds a B.S. in Education and a M.A. in American History from Central Missouri State University. Graduate work was completed in French History and Economics at the University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri. As an artist he has been the recipient of numerous awards and has had several successful one man exhibitions. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Wanting to work on a Missouri arts project, Dick states, "As we researched, we discovered there was something in Ste. Genevieve that was very powerful. The art colony here was one of the best in this country…maybe one of the best in the world."

Each chapter has a biographical essay, full of stories about and from the artist, style critiques, and historical perspective. The authors hope this book "further encourages contemporary Missouri artists to be proud of the tradition they are working in, and illustrates that the citizens of the heartland can and should be the arbiters of their own cultural tastes."

H. Morley Swingle, Cape Girardeau
Book Award


Juxtaposing a modern Missouri courtroom with historical flashbacks to the era of Mississippi River steamboaters of the 1850s and the Civil War in the 1860s, The Gold of Cape Girardeau weaves what author and Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle calls "sugar-coated" history into a story told with suspense and high drama.

Swingle's novel (now in its third printing) has sold more than 6,000 copies, and along with his lectures and presentations has sparked renewed interest in Missouri and Cape Girardeau history.

Through the eyes of a 16-year-old orphan the reader experiences being part of a steamboat crew based in Cape engaged in the St. Louis--New Orleans trade. As a young man he is thrust into the Civil War in Missouri, climaxing with the Battle of Cape Girardeau in April, 1863. "I wanted to write a book that is both a page-turner and a history lesson," Swingle said. "It has everything from a love story to steamboating to the Civil War to dueling to Mark Twain."

Swingle, 51, was born in Cape Girardeau. His family later moved to Crystal City, where he graduated from Crystal City High School in 1973. He received both an undergraduate degree in English and his law degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia before moving back to Cape Girardeau. He is currently serving his fifth four-year term as the elected prosecuting attorney of Cape Girardeau County. He has tried more than 125 jury trials and has prosecuted 64 murder defendants. He has published more than twenty articles in law journals, but The Gold of Cape Girardeau is his first novel. He lives in Cape Girardeau with his wife and two daughters.

Georgia Warner Walter, Kirksville
Book Award


Georgia Warner Walter served as director of the A. T. Still Memorial Library, at the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine, from 1969 until 1986. She spent the next six years writing her second book, The First School of Osteopathic Medicine, which was published for the Centennial Year of the College in 1992. This is the definitive history of the distinctly American form of medicine, founded in Missouri in 1892, by A. T. Still, MD, DO. Walter's other titles include: Women and Osteopathic Medicine, Osteopathic Medicine Past and Present, and The First D.O.: Dr. Andrew Taylor Still.

Missourians can be proud of the legacy this profession gives to the nation and the world. Today there are 20 medical schools in the U.S. (two in MO) based on the teachings of Dr. A. T. Still, and many more schools internationally. Walter's detailed research and writing has preserved the rich history of the people involved in this new form of medicine during Missouri's early years.

A recipient of the regional Daughters of the American Revolution "Women in History" Award, Walter donates royalties from sales of all four books to the Still National Osteopathic Museum.

Dr. Georgia Warner Walter, the daughter of Dr. Maxwell and Tina Warner, was born in Des Moines, Iowa, May 30, 1924. Her early years were spent in Michigan. In 1938 the family moved to Kirksville Missouri where Dr. Warner assumed a position on the faculty at the Kirksville College of Osteopathy and Surgery (now Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine) and later served as its dean. In 1948 Georgia received her BS in Education from the Northeast Missouri State Teachers College (now Truman State University). She taught for several years before receiving her Certification in Library Science in 1969, also from NMSTC. At that time she was employed as director of the A. T. Still Memorial Library at KCOM. She served in that capacity for seventeen years.

Upon her retirement in 1986 she was awarded the Honorary Doctor of Osteopathy Degree in Education from KCOM. In 1990 she received the Living Tribute Award from KCOM. Mrs. Walter was a member of the National Medical Library Association and the Missouri Library Association. She has been an active member of her community and of the First Presbyterian Church. She has one daughter, Cynthia Willcox of Lancaster, Mo. and one son, Gregory Walter of Kirksville, MO. Her husband, Francis M. Walter, BS, DO Ed (Hon) was dean of students at KCOM for thirty years.

Nominations for 2008 Humanities Awards

The application deadline is January 25th, 2008.
To nominate a person, group, or organization, please submit:

• a nomination form with contact information and signatures of one nominator and two supporters   PDF   DOC
• a one page summary
• more detailed information which may include additional letters of support, longer documentation of accomplishments, articles and news clippings, publications, programs--in short, anything that you feel will help make the case for your nominee.

mail to:

Missouri Humanities Council
attn: Megan Cahill, Governor's Humanities Awards
543 Hanley Industrial Court, Suite 201
St. Louis, MO 63144-1905

Please note that we are unable to return supporting materials.


Information on the 2004 Awardees

updated 10/1/07