The facade of the Beaumier Heritage Center at Northern Michigan University is pictured. (Journal photo by Abby LaForest)

MARQUETTE — Serving as a place to house the history of Northern Michigan University and the Upper Peninsula, NMU’s Beaumier Heritage Center is a great place to find free, accessible education.

The center was dedicated to NMU alumnus and professor Dr. John Beaumier in 2006. Beaumier received a bachelor’s degree in biology from Northern in 1953 while he also played on the football team.

His life journey took him to medical school at Marquette University in Milwaukee before becoming an associate professor of orthopedic surgery at the University of North Dakota Medical School and the Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Medicine.

Beaumier also served on the Delta County Community Foundation and Delta County Historical Society boards, and remained a lifelong supporter of NMU and Marquette University athletic programs before he passed away in 2017.

“… he (Beaumier) always credited Northern with setting him on the path of his career and so he wanted to make a significant donation to the university,” said Dan Truckey, director and curator of the center. “He wanted it to be for something that he valued, and one of the things he valued was the history and culture of the U.P. because … his roots were very strong here and so there had been talk for a long time with Northern creating a U.P. museum.”

Making his first donation in 2004 as an endowment of a million dollars, Beaumier helped fund operating costs for precenter projects, student labor and exhibits that are currently on display in the Superior Dome. The actual building establishment of the Beaumier Heritage Center, with the help of an additional million-dollar endowment from Beaumier, took place in 2016 and remains open to the public today.

Truckey also discussed the success of the center’s past exhibits, including ones on U.P. ghost towns and 3-D historical images curated by photographer Jack Deo.

“We created a really cool exhibit called U.P.-3D, which was really popular because people walk(ed) in, (got) a pair of 3D glasses and they (got) to see these three-dimensional images blown up quite large,” Truckey said. “And it was very successful, but I also think too … (it’s), for us it’s really important to explore how the U.P. was developed in the 19th century, but also how it changed in the 20th century and (asking) ‘Where are we going now?’… we’re a heritage center, not a history museum. I see the difference (between them is) that a heritage center is also about celebrating our living culture, not just what happened in the past, but where we’re headed and why today is relevant to our past.”

The current exhibit on display is called “Northern Tapestry: 125 Years of Stories” to celebrate Northern Michigan University’s 125th anniversary this year. Looking at a variety of perspectives and experiences, this exhibit helps visitors learn about the types of people across the university’s history who have contributed to building Northern’s culture.

“I think what’s significant about it [the exhibit] is that we’re really looking at different people, individuals and their stories that have never really been discussed in any great deal or context at Northern. [We’re] looking at [things like] ‘what was it like to be a female faculty member at Northern in the early 20th century?’ These are people who are really important to the development of the university, but also to the education [and] the first core of teachers who came from this institution and taught in schools all over the Upper Peninsula, Michigan and beyond.” Truckey explained. “[We’re looking at] ‘what was that like?’ and ‘who were they?’ and ‘what kind of influence did they have?’ [We’re] also look[ing] at diversity on campus and see[ing] that there’s always been people of color on our campus from the very first class. And yes, it’s been at times a very small minority, but…we have a lot more diversity as a university than we [may] think we do. It also reflects the experiences they had at Northern, [they] kind of reflect what Northern was like and [what] the Upper Peninsula was like.”

In the spirit of consistently growing and expanding from the past onward, the Beaumier U.P. Heritage Center also collects various donations from the public, along with inviting them to contribute to their community-focused research website, Maamawi-Ozhigi/Together We Grow.

“We are always welcoming donations of not only funds…but also donations of artifacts, relevant to Northern history, relevant to the Upper Peninsula’s history,” Truckey encouraged. “We want people to consider us as a potential home for those things because, instead of throwing them out, we’d rather have a chance to look at them and see if it’s something that we would like to keep [at] the institution. I think the greatest support people can give us is just coming to see what we do and coming to our events because that’s why we do it, [it’s] for the public.”

The connection between Northern’s campus community and the U.P. community as a whole is something that the center strives to cultivate, and does so by making their programming, exhibits, and offerings both free and open to the public.

“We want them [the public] to be inspired by what we do and we want them to learn from what we’re doing. We’re not just a campus thing, we are for the community in general…it’s always important to reiterate, yes, we are open to the public,” said Truckey. “What we do is open to the public as a university. We’re a very open university. We want the public to come here even if they’re not going to class, or work[ing] here. We want them to be involved in what we’re doing, and that’s still sometimes a barrier that people think that they’re not welcome here and it could[n’t] be further from the truth.”

The Beaumier U.P. Heritage Center in collaboration with the Center for Upper Peninsula Studies will be hosting their annual Sonderegger Symposium on Nov. 8, which is a conference featuring presentations focused on Upper Peninsula historical, cultural, economic and scientific topics. The event is free and open to the public with no need to register.

Visitors interested in seeing the current exhibits can visit the center from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays. The center is located on Northern’s campus at 1401 Presque Isle Avenue.

For additional information and inquiries, please visit nmu.edu/beaumierheritagecenter/ or contact the center at 906-227-3212 or heritage@nmu.edu.

Abby LaForest can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 548. Her email address is alaforest@miningjournal.net.