SLO County History Center is documenting coronavirus. It wants your stories

As the president of the Board of Directors for the History Center of San Luis Obispo County, I would like to express our gratitude to The Tribune for your coronavirus coverage, and especially for calling attention to the need to remember our nonprofit community and the important services we provide. You’ve consistently reported on the way this crisis is placing severe strains on human services organizations like the Food Bank, Transitions Mental Health, and CAPSLO Homeless Services.

Those nonprofits that provide cultural, environmental and arts events — including the History Center — have also been stressed.

Sadly, the 50th anniversary of Festival Mozaic will pass this summer without the fanfare of trumpets and the familiar strains of Mozart or Beethoven. The opening ceremonies for the 2020 Festival were to be held at our own Dallidet Gardens. We will miss the SLO International Film Festival, the Avila Blues Festival, KCBX’s Live Oak Music Festival,and many other celebrations that have been scrubbed for the year. The History Center has canceled or postponed several smaller events we had intended to host through the spring and early summer, and our museum has been closed to visitors since mid-March.

This crisis comes at a time when our organization had just begun to articulate a renewed vision and commitment to our mission, “to promote the understanding and appreciation of San Luis Obispo County’s historical and cultural heritage.” We’ve launched major new campaigns with our loyal members and supporters to solicit support from the community and from granting agencies to enhance our exhibits and improve management of our sizable collection of historic artifacts and ephemera. While the crisis has hampered our ability to carry out this mission, we remain committed to fulfilling our vital role.

We now ask our community, including The Tribune and other media organizations, to help us to record for posterity our collective experience in this time of the coronavirus pandemic. At times like these, we must collect and curate those worthy stories of the heroism of front-line health care workers, and the tales of struggle and sacrifice among our business owners, workers and families.

Please send an email message or a video record of your story to info@historycenterslo.org so that our History Center can maintain a record of your experience for posterity.

As we begin to pull out of this catastrophic economic decline, nonprofits will be a vital part of our recovery. Please know that your History Center will be there working with the city and county, with the Downtown Association, with our business partners and with our neighbors in the city’s Cultural District to welcome back visitors to our community. As soon as we can pull it off, we will be opening our newest exhibit featuring the fascinating heritage of our Jewish community.

For almost 70 years, our organization has shared the good times as well as the bad, and we look forward with great anticipation to that date when we can open our doors to the museum and the gate to the Dallidet once again.

John Ashbaugh is a former member of the San Luis Obispo City Council. He wrote this on behalf of the Board of Directors of the History Center of SLO County.