Ann Golden found perfect job at Moses Lake museum

MOSES LAKE - Ann Golden said she knew what she wanted to do from the time she was in grade school. There was, however, one small drawback.

Golden, 35, said she was fascinated with archeology from third grade on. "But after a while you see what they do is dig in very, very, hot places," she said. She decided she would rather pursue her love of archeology and history someplace where they swept the floors regularly, where they had air conditioning, she said.

She found it, and last Wednesday she celebrated her 12th anniversary as curator of the collection at the Adam East Museum and Art Center in Moses Lake.

Archeology is part of the larger discipline of anthropology, she said, and anthropology was the degree she earned from Eastern Washington University. Anthropology is a crowded field, and museum curator jobs are very competitive. Golden said preparation was the key to getting a museum job at 23 years of age.

"I didn't go to college thinking, 'now what?' I had a whole plan." Golden's anthropology degree came with an emphasis in museums and a minor in history. She took internships (work but not much pay, if any) at Fairchild Air Force Base, Eastern Washington State Historical Society and Yellowstone National Park.

"That's where I learned everything I know today," she said. Golden specializes in Native American history, but at Yellowstone she worked with a lot of different pieces of the park's collection, from the stone artifacts of the Native American tribes to the postcards of tourists gone by.

The Yellowstone connection mattered for other reasons, her mom worked at Yellowstone as a young woman, she said.

History always has held a fascination for her, Golden said. "For me, I think it's the connection to the past. When you can hold history in the palm of your hand, even if it's in white gloves. Because we now wear white gloves." White gloves prevent skin oils from damaging materials.

She cited the example of a woman who donated her scrapbook to the museum, filled with items that dated back to the town's founding, when it was called Neppel.

The woman was a graduate of the Neppel school, and had carefully preserved her high school letter. When she turned to the last page, "here was this pristine red and white 'N,'" Golden said.

Many people in Moses Lake have donated documents, memorabilia, textiles, photographs, artifacts, and those donations have come with family stories and anecdotes about early Moses Lake, and of the region before it was Moses Lake. "They've let me into their family," she said.

"I just feel privileged to be able to take care of Moses Lake history."

The museum is named for Adam East, a Moses Lake man who amassed a large collection of Native American artifacts. He was fascinated by archeology, as his scrapbooks prove. "When King Tut was found (1922), Adam East cut that out of the newspaper," Golden said.

Golden has been working with the collection for so long it's almost like she knows him. "I would've loved to have met Adam East," she said, and she's visited the graves of East and his wife in Wenatchee.

East's collection is the base of the museum's holdings. "It's probably one of the largest stone lithic (tool) collections on this side of the state," Golden said.

Moses Lake is a relatively young town; Neppel was founded in 1911. That's good for the museum. "That history is still in our grasp," Golden said. It's possible to talk with people who remember Neppel and when the town changed its name (1938). The museum maintains an oral history collection to capture those memories.

A local photographer documented weddings and graduations and town celebrations from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s. His negative collection is in the museum, and is being cataloged by Golden and a band of volunteers

A local physician went out and looked through the remains of the homesteads after low water drove the landowners away. He found everything from doorknobs to washtubs to lamps to shoes, and eventually donated those items, his personal archive and money to the museum.

But not everything old should be donated to a museum; museums have storage issues too, and typically don't show more than 10 percent of their collection at any given time.

The Moses Lake museum is looking for items "with significance to and related to Moses Lake history. To Neppel history," Golden said. "We're looking for things that tell Neppel and Moses Lake history. Telling community stories."

And the museum's first concern is to take care of what it has, Golden said, making sure pictures and negatives are preserved in an acid-free environment, textiles are kept at the proper temperature and humidity, stone objects are safely shelved.

The museum has a tiny group of volunteers who help with that work, who catalog and re-file materials. They include Gary Nichols, Jennifer Powell, Jon Penhallurick and Martin Shemp.

Whether or not people intend to donate some of their stuff to a museum, they'll do their descendants a favor if they write down or make an oral record of their story, Golden said. A generation from now all that information, from anecdotes of the old days to identification of people in pictures, might be lost, she said.

A native of Southern California, Golden said she was all prepared to go to a regional college when she lost her financing. So she turned to alternative methods, in her case, the Job Corps.

The Job Corps led her to the Pacific Northwest. The first class was firefighting, Golden said, which turned out to be a bad fit. "So then I did the painting project." The Job Corps was a path to community college in Mt. Vernon and then Spokane, which led to Eastern Washington.

After finishing her internship at Yellowstone, Golden said she applied to museums all over the country. Moses Lake needed a curator - and the rest, to coin a phrase, is history.

Golden said the museum is pretty much the perfect job for her. "I love my job here. Its different every day." But it's a little bit more than a job. "I feel privileged to be able to take care of Moses Lake history," she said. "I don't take it for granted at all. It's very humbling."