The Lebanon Museum Foundation will hold a reception on Thursday, Oct. 12, for the twelve men and women interviewed in the foundation’s recent oral history project, “Gathering Lebanon’s Stories.”
Vice President Linda Ziedrich interviewed a dozen locals for the project and had the interviews transcribed.
The event will take place at the Lebanon Public Library, 55 Academy St., beginning at 3 p.m. Refreshments will be served. Everyone interested in Lebanon’s history is welcome to attend.
“We launched the oral history project as a way of carrying on this mission during the COVID-19 pandemic when we had no museum space and couldn’t hold public events elsewhere,” Ziedrich said.
The foundation’s mission is to preserve the history of the Lebanon area and to engage the community in that history. Although there still is no physical Lebanon Museum, the organization has a small display space at Sun Lane Stones, 846 Main St., and has resumed holding public programs.
“I tried to include some of our oldest residents,” Ziedrich said. “Our goal was to collect stories of Lebanon in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.”
Some of the interviewees talked about more recent times as well, she said.
The Siletz Tribal Charitable Contribution Fund paid for the audio recorder, microphones and other equipment. Consumers Power Charitable Trust paid the cost of transcribing the interviews, and the Linn County Cultural Coalition paid for printing them.
Audio recordings and transcriptions of all the interviews will be available at the Lebanon Public Library. For more information about the project or about the Lebanon Museum Foundation, write to [email protected] or visit the website at lebanonmuseum.org.