Contents Today
Central Yesterday
Keeper of the Past: Vivian Richardson
By Mike Greife
Vivian Richardson likes to save things. Whether it's an old Mule letter jacket or a rare prehistoric artifact, she realizes the value in preserving the past. As assistant director of Central Missouri's Arthur F. McClure Archives and University Museum, Richardson also serves as UCM's historian.
Her knowledge of Central Missouri and its people is so deep it's hard to believe she's officially been historian for only 11 years. Her UCM roots go back further, 20 years, to her days as an undergraduate.
Her passion for history dates back even further, to after her high school graduation, when she pursued it as a major at the University of Central Arkansas. Marriage and children intervened, and her husband's career in the U.S. Air Force took them around the world. Several jobs in health care led to a professional career in nursing. She obtained her LPN degree in Arkansas and an associate degree in nursing from State Fair Community College when the family moved to Missouri.
While living near Whiteman Air Force Base, she decided to revisit her first academic love, history, and enrolled at UCM. She finished her bachelor's degree in 1988 and started her master's. The mother of two boys obtained a graduate assistantship with Arthur McClure, a professor of history and then university archivist. Under his mentorship, she began to gain valuable experience in building museum collections and preserving history through the development of carefully catalogued archival materials.
While still working in nursing and raising a family, she began teaching a history class at the university. When she obtained a part-time position for the Johnson County Historical Society as curator of its museum collections, she started to apply the lessons McClure had taught her. She became a fulltime UCM employee in 1998, accepting the post of assistant director and adjunct teacher in the Department of History and Anthropology.
In the past 11 years, Richardson has seen the archives move from the basement of the old Ward Edwards Library, then combined with the university museum into the Elliott Union, and finally into its current home on the first floor of the James C. Kirkpatrick Library. The museum was formerly housed in a small, brick church building on Clark Street.
"The archives and museum continue to grow because of donations of items and documents," Richardson says.
"When we moved into this location with the opening of the library in 1999, it was more room than we had ever had, but we filled it quickly," she adds. "But archivists are packrats - we're always in search of the next really unique or historic item to add to a collection."
Comments About This Article
I hope the collection includes some of those handbooks from the 60's and early 70's which dictated the dress code and other rules for behavior on campus. I foolishly had a burning ceremony with mine when I graduated. Now people don't believe me when I tell them women had to wear skirts (to make sure their legs were showing, I guess)to classes, for meals at the dorm, in the library, unless the temp was 10 degrees or lower, and that women had to be safely locked in their dorm rooms at 10 pm weeknights! We were thankful that few professors enforced the skirt rule. Then there was the rule about "appropriate uppergarments" (I am not making this up) which led to my boyfriend's insistence on a daily "bra check." Ah, the good ole days---from an unreformed rebel, class of 72.
Great to hear the Archives/Museum bear Dr. McClure's name. He was one of my favorites. How about some more info about faculty who are now retired?
More please - I think the archives should have their own publication!!!!
I would have liked to have learned about specific items in the museum.
My good friend donated items her aunt collected while @ CMSC.
Nice article but did I miss the email address of the museum or Vivian Richardson?
I was not aware that this even existed. It opens your eyes as to one of the most valuable pieces of information that people will ever have.......history. If you cannot learn from your mistakes, then you paid a dear price to have missed the opportunity to achieve a greater success story.
Very interesting. I am a packrat too and love to save things for history.