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Marquette Regional History Center presents awards at annual meeting

Dan Truckey, director of the Beaumier U.P. Heritage Center, receives the Marquette Regional History Center’s Peter White Award Wednesday on behalf of the center. The recognition was made during the MRHC’s annual meeting. (Journal photo by Christie Bleck)

By CHRISTIE BLECK

Journal Staff Writer

MARQUETTE — The Marquette Regional History Center is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, but its Wednesday annual meeting was special in another way.

The center’s Helen Longyear Paul Award was given posthumously for the first time, and to a deserving recipient: the late John Anderton.

Anderton was a geography professor and head of the Department of Earth, Environmental and Geographical Sciences at Northern Michigan University who died in 2014 at age 49.

The MRHC’s Peter White Award was presented to the Beaumier U.P. Heritage Center, located on the NMU campus.

The Helen Longyear Paul Award is given to an individual who fosters the preservation and enhancement of history in the Marquette region.

Jim Paquette, an MRHC trustee and a close friend of Anderton who shared archaeological trips with him, talked about the late professor.

“John was hard-working, (a) dedicated partner of mine since those first early days when he helped out as a college student on our historic 1985 archaeological excavation and mapping project on the north shore of Teal Lake in our hometown of Negaunee,” Paquette said.

Presenting the award to Anderton’s family was personal to him, he said.

“John was always there to lend me a helping hand and to unselfishly share with me his incredible gift of knowledge in all that I did through the years to uncover the mysteries of our ancient Upper Peninsula past,” Paquette said.

Receiving the award on behalf of Anderton were his parents, Keith and Judith DeFant, of Negaunee, and his children, Karalyn and Jack Anderton, of Marquette.

“If you knew John, you knew he was very passionate about the Upper Peninsula, about Lake Superior, about local history,” Keith DeFant said. “Loved to give tours and share the knowledge that he had.”

MRHC Trustee Kathryn Russell presented the Peter White Award, which is given to an institution that promotes history.

“Each year the Beaumier Heritage Center offers a series of unique exhibitions and public programs,” Russell said, with past subjects including high school sports, ghost towns, World War I and the U.P., and conserving the land. “This center also provides students the important opportunity to learn about museum studies, historical research, and writing and public history.”

The center includes artifacts related to people of the U.P. and partners with regional historical organizations on permanent and traveling exhibits as well as community programs, and offers a series of folk concerts, she said.

Dan Truckey, Beaumier Center director, credited current and former NMU staff with supporting the center.

However, he mentioned the students who have worked for him or served as interns as being a big part of the Beaumier experience through contributing ideas and research, with some now working in the field of public history.

“I couldn’t have done the things that we’ve done without their help,” Truckey said.

He said Anderton was a supportive faculty member and presented many programs for the center.

“I really miss John,” Truckey said.

Also, the MRHC staff has helped by loaning artifacts for exhibits, helping with research and collaborating with projects.

“That’s the glory of the field that we choose, because even though in a way we want the same people to come see our museum, that’s not how we work,” Truckey said. “We work together. We want to support each other’s activities.”

That support, he pointed out, includes all such institutions in town, such as the Upper Peninsula Children’s Museum, the Peter White Public Library, the Marquette Maritime Museum, the city of Marquette Arts and Culture Center and the DeVos Art Museum.

The MRHC on Wednesday also celebrated past award recipients, which included the maritime historian Fred Stonehouse and the late author John Voelker, both of whom who had received the Helen Longyear Paul Award, and the PWPL and The Mining Journal, which had been given the Peter White Award.

Cris Osier, executive director of the MRHC, presented a report at the annual meeting, saying 2017 included 30 programs and events. Also, all of its bus tours sold out and the cemetery walks were nearly at full capacity.

“This translates to almost 4,500 people attending programs and events alone, and the galleries were visited by about 5,000 people,” Osier said.

She thanked those visitors as well as members and donors.

“Without your financial support, history would not come alive,” Osier said. “We do this for the love of history and the love of our community, to have a place where visitors can learn in many ways.”

Christie Bleck can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250.

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