John Kelleher Havre Daily News jkelleher@havredailynews.com
More than 100 volunteers will take part in Hands on History at the Holiday Village Mall Saturday. They will help entertain and educate a large crowd about life of yesteryear. Money will be raised for the H. Earl Clack Museum at the event that in five years has become a spring tradition. And it all started because Havre resident Lois Gilge attended the Cottonwood Festival in Great Falls and thought it would be a good idea to emulate the program in Havre. "She wanted to know why we couldn't do something like that here," said Anna Brumley, the chair of the event. The museum decided to give it a try. "The first year, we had 15 or 16 activities and two or three demonstrations," she recalled. The event became a hit. People began to volunteer to help out. This year there will be 32 activities and seven demonstrations. "It gets bigger every year," she said. People will get a chance to make candles, operate ham radios, play puppets, learn how to make rope and make ice cream. For the first time this year, people will be able to ride a tractor wagon and see a blacksmith do his work. Both attendees and volunteers will have fun, she said. "I have never seen a better group of volunteers," Brumley said. "They have so much fun." More than 40 volunteers are expe c t ed f rom Montana Stat e University-Northern, she said. Like most volunteers, the students heard about the festivities by word of mouth. Someone contacted MSU-N professor Lanny Wilke, who got the ball rolling on the campus. The students enjoy getting children involved, she said. Brumley said she is looking forward to see how young children react to the typewriter activity. A 1900 typewriter will be exhibited, and youngsters will be asked to type on it. "We will have some carbon paper," she said. "I bet the 7- and 8-year-olds won't know what carbon paper is." Daisy Sherman will perform Native American dances. Brumley expects that demonstration to be especially popular. And she believes children will be excited to talk to people in other parts of the world on a ham radio. The festivities will be the culmination of four months of work. "We get started around January," she said. The committee and the volunteers work together, each performing their own responsibilities. "It just sort of all falls together," she said.
