When Derek Aaron retired after 30 years of teaching, he was not content to sit idle.
He searched for opportunities to fill his time and settled on one after seeing a newspaper advertisement.
The ad was searching for an executive director for the Oktibbeha County Heritage Museum in Starkville.
“I had never been in an interview before, even though I was a teacher,” Aaron said. “I just thought I had done awfully. Getting the email that they had chosen me was just something that was amazing. I am honored.”
When he found out he got the job, he uprooted his entire life in Jasper, Alabama, and moved to Starkville for the opportunity.
Now, a little more than a month into his tenure, he is beginning to get his feet under him.
He had a moment that impacted him recently when a couple came to donate some items to the museum.
While there, the man noticed his mother in a picture in the Starkville High School exhibit. The thing was, he did not know his mother had graduated in 1946 and was amazed to learn it.
“So, things like that (are cool),” Aaron said. “It’s nice to see people come in and learn things that they didn’t know about.”
Aaron is walking uncharted ground so to speak. In its 43 years of operation, he is the first executive director hired for the museum, which is governed by an appointed board.
The move is an effort years in the making, and it is an attempt to make the museum more accessible to the public.
“If the museum’s going to be more of a service to the community, and provide greater opportunities for community interaction, it needed someone there to be more focused on it and passionate about the museum and able to articulate that, on a daily basis, to the community,” said Cory Gallo, chair for the museum’s board of trustees. “That was really kind of the push.”
Founded in 1979, the museum occupies a renovated 1874 Mobile & Ohio railroad depot.
The exhibits offer a peek into Oktibbeha County’s past via a collection of artifacts such as photographs, tools and more. There are exhibits on Mayor Lynn Spruill and her military service, Starkville High School throughout the years, Felix Long Hospital, the predecessor to OCH Regional Medical Center and a rotating exhibit, which is currently focused on Dan Camp, the founder of the Cotton District, to name a few.
The museum is partially funded by Oktibbeha County and the City of Starkville. It receives $10,000 a year from both the county and city.
It receives $18,000 a year from Friends of the Museum, which is a nonprofit organization established to raise funds. It also depends on donations from the community to sustain operations.
Discussions about bringing on an executive director were ongoing for about a decade, but Gallo focused on establishing the position once he took over as board chair in 2020.
Throughout the interview process, he said Aaron was a clear favorite.
“He has experience in education and working with kids is relatable because we are hoping to reach children and parents,” Gallo said. “We are hoping to do more lesson plans and programs that his experience as an educator will be invaluable for.”
Expanding the programs is actually Aaron’s goal for the museum as well.
He said he would like to have classes come in and he has a prepared lesson plan for the teachers so they too can be involved but also have a break.
“I want to get kids involved,” Aaron said. “I want them to come to the museum and do educational programs where I could do lesson plans for the teachers so they would not have to think about something and just bring them here and then have a lesson on it.”
Gallo said the group hopes to begin expanding programming in a few months, but first Aaron has to get acclimated. He is already well underway though.
“Starkville’s great,” Aaron said. “I really enjoy being here. It’s been an adjustment, but I’ve gotten used to the traffic during school, the kids coming in. I know there are down times in December when they leave. But I really enjoy it. I love the people. They have been very kind to me.”
In the meantime, he has been working to boost and maintain the museum’s social media presence. It serves a dual purpose though in that he is learning about the different exhibits while doing it.
“It’s helping me to learn more about what we’ve got in the museum,” Aaron said. “We’ve got so much that I don’t know it all yet.”
Another change being mulled over now that a person is in place, is potentially expanding the hours to include Friday.
Currently, the museum is open from 1 to 4 p.m. on Tuesday through Thursday.
All of this is more or less a test run, according to Gallo, but he is excited about the way things seem to be trending.
“This is a two-year process and then we will reevaluate and see if we need to get more funding to get him on for more than 20 hours a week or see how it might look,” Gallo said. “So, we’re going to do it for a few years, see how it works, and go from there.”
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