City to consider funding archivist position

With the city's 2012 Centennial celebration drawing closer, the Sebring Historical Society's president will appeal to the city today for the second time to help fund the society's archivist position to get the event going smoothly.

The archivist is critical for producing books for the centennial, and there's a mountain of other work that needs to be done, said Allen Altvater III.

Although the county funded the archivist position since 1994, the position filled by Carole Goad for the last eight years became the latest casualty in the county's tentative 2010 - 2011 budget.

The county agreed to continue paying Goad's benefits, about a third of the total cost.

Altvater described Goad as a jewel. He cited her hard work and praised her enthusiasm for the job.

In response to a motion of the city council, the Sebring city staff sent an Aug. 18 letter to Interim County Administrator Rick Helms, asking that the county review its original commitment to fund the position.

City Administrator Scott Noethlich said Friday the city has not received a response yet.

Commissioners will revisit the funding issue at a county budget hearing on Sept. 9, Helms said Friday.

"It will be a board decision what to do with that position," he added.

So, what does Goad do?

Goad keeps the Sebring Historical Society's climate-controlled archives open to the public Monday through Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The society's archives are located behind and below the Sebring Public Library.

"If we lose our archivist, that pretty much shuts our doors unless we can find enough volunteers to help," Altvater III told the council at its Aug. 17 meeting.

During the earlier days, the archives were kept in the homes of individual society members. Then it was moved to the basement of the Sebring Police Department, but was open to society members only.

Goad could be considered not only the keeper of Sebring's history but much of Highlands County.

She produces the society's quarterly newsletter, "The Historian."

Several times a year she receives tours from the county's schools and civic organizations and lectures on a variety of historical topics.

The society has thousands of documents and news articles on file and more than 6,000 photographs, along with copies of newspapers dating back to 1913.

All of the senior year books for county high schools dating back to 1912 are housed there, as well as obituary information and files on church bulletins submitted.

There are several books of African-American history that Goad has compiled, as well as books on churches, fire departments, police departments, the Highlands Little Theatre, the New Testament Mission and government clippings.

One day, Goad said she was visited by an elderly Seminole Indian woman.

"She asked if we had any old photos of native Indians," remembered Goad.

"When I showed them to her, she was able to identify almost every person in the photos. "I was so happy. You never know who's going to come through that door," she added.

She got to one picture, and the old woman refused to identify a woman in the photo.

"She said, 'No like her, she mean, no talk about her,'" Goad laughed.

All of the copies of archival materials are printed on a special paper that is supposed to last 300 years.

"I don't know how I can come back and check on that," Goad said with a good-natured laugh. "If I could, I would."