The next HCC meeting will be hosted by the Orange County Archives on Tues., March 1st, 10am to Noon in the exhibition gallery (third floor) of the Old Orange County Courthouse, 211 W. Santa Ana Blvd., Santa Ana.

The Old Courthouse is shown as Building #1 of the Civic Center on this map: http://www.ci.santa-ana.ca.us/documents/civiconly.pdf
There will be free parking courtesy of OC Parks in the lot between buildings 16 and 10. (Handicapped parking is available immediately behind the Old Courthouse.)

Tours of the Orange County Archives and Old Courthouse will be available after the meeting. If you plan to attend, please RSVP to Susan.Berumen@rec.ocgov.com.

Are you ready for Show & Tell? The Orange County Historical Society is holding “Show & Tell Night” this Thursday, Feb. 10th, 7:30pm, at Trinity Episcopal Church, 2400 N. Canal St., in Orange. The event is open to the public.

Rummage through your garage, files, scrapbooks, or trunks for a choice artifact or bit of memorabilia or ephemera that helps tell us something about Orange County of yore.

Maybe you have a local orange crate that connects to a story about a parent who worked in a packing house. Perhaps you have your name badge from when you worked at Disneyland on opening day. What about great-grandpa’s branding iron, or a piece of flatware with the name of an early local hotel stamped on the back?

Or perhaps the historical institution you work for would like to be represented with a particularly cool artifact.

There will be a sign-up sheet when you arrive at the meeting. People will be called up in order of their position on the list. If we run out of time, we’ll save the list for another meeting, so you’ll still get your chance to share your “piece of history” and a bit of the story behind it.

You know the drill…and the prophesies. Use it or lose it. Such clichés abound in the world of the historian, the researcher, the genealogist, and those dedicated to preserving the resources of our heritage on the local, regional, national, and global levels. We all know that historical records — that vast panoply of everything from antique military muster rolls and diaries to yesteryear’s fragile wood-pulp newspapers — are disintegrating faster than they can be transcribed or preserved. Yes, there may be a small army of archivists and sadly a much smaller troop of transcribers, scanners, and digital-preservation workers, but the enemy of Time (and decay) is relentless. And we are losing.

I agree this is alarmist talk, but not defeatist. Consider the devastating statistics of how many records are lost — many totally — every year, and the march of decades rearward is astonishing. One of the greatest examples of a “lost battle” is that of the St. Louis fire of July 12, 1973, which destroyed about 80 percent of the records for Army personnel discharged between November 1, 1912, and January 1, 1960. Also lost was about 75 percent of the records for Air Force personnel with surnames from “Hubbard” through “Z” discharged between September 25, 1947, and January 1, 1964. It is hard to determine exactly what was lost in the fire, because there were no indices to the blocks of records involved. The records were merely filed in alphabetical order for the following groups:

• World War I: Army September 7, 1939 to November 1, 1912;
• World War II: Army December 3l, 1946 to September 8, 1939;
• Post World War II: Army December 3l, 1959 to January 1, 1947;
• Air Force: December 31, 1963 to September 25, 1947.

These were original records for which no copies existed.

Time, in the case of historical materials, is a “slow fire” as destructive as the quick one cited above. While we now have extraordinary technical resources and tools for preservation, we nevertheless face daily loss of irreplaceable materials — the facts, if you will, that make up our history and heritage. Consider, too, how scant the technical staff facing this onslaught of decay and loss. How many trained and in-training archivists are there working to “update” your local and regional collections of materials? The genealogy section, for example, of the Huntington Beach Central Library may have some 17,000 volumes — hard copies, that is, of books, pamphlets, and other materials. It is an exceptional resource. But how many of these resource materials have been transcribed or scanned into reproducible and accessible digital format? Where are the technical staff assigned to do this? What is the budget for such a project? And that is simply one example.

Orange County’s several historical societies are all staffed by volunteers. Many of them have only the most rudimentary skill sets for “this digital age” and archival preservation tools, equipment, and technical experience are almost non-existent. I have spoken to members of the societies. They are proud of the historical materials in their collections, but also state they don’t even have the resources to catalog their acquisitions, let alone transcribe, scan, and digitize them. And to the ever-increasing “online culture” that means the materials are inaccessible.

Private, corporate, institutional, and not-for-profit organizational donors need to be made aware that their contributions are vital if we are to make any head-way against the loss of our legacy, of our history, of our heritage. It’s not being alarmist to say so. It’s stating fact.

I just came across this excellent set of videos chronicling the history of Hiram Clay Kellogg, the museum that now includes his family’s home, and how the museum is helping to preserve, promote, and educate about the Kellogg legacy as well as portray what life was like in Orange County at the time Kellogg lived here.

For more information, please visit the Heritage Museum of Orange County.

MCAS Tustin, June 1968 (Photo courtesy Orange County Archives)

Received via email today from Linda Jennings, President of the Tustin Preservation Conservancy.

I’m pleased to report the following from Supervisor Bill Campbell:

Former Marine Corps Air Station Tustin, Park Concept Plan- The Board directed OC Parks to prepare a concept plan to establish a regional park at the former Marine Corps Air Station Tustin and to preserve the North Blimp Hangar. In conjunction with the concept plan, a number of analyses will be completed, including:

• A re-evaluation of the requirements necessary for the public to access the hangar and the costs to satisfy those requirements
• A recreation demand and market evaluation of potential uses for the park, including the hangar
• An assessment of the costs to develop park uses adjacent to the hangar
• Exploration of the financing options available to OC Parks and the County to develop, operate, and maintain the regional park

The concept plan and supporting analyses are expected to be completed within a year. Board direction will then be sought to proceed with more detailed planning, design, and financing work and the preparation of a Program of Utilization for submittal to the National Park Service. I support finding a way to preserve the hangar.If you would like to show your support of this decisions, you can call Supervisor Campbell’s office at 714 734-3330.

Tustin Preservation Conservancy
Educate. Advocate. Facilitate.
www.PreserveTustin.com