Docent loves telling stories about Cape's Glenn House

Marcie Sullivan loves to talk. And she loves people. As a docent at the Glenn House in Cape Girardeau, she gets to do just that.

Sullivan, 78, started as a docent in 2000 and now says she can't imagine life without the Glenn House. She volunteers two days a week and occasionally on weekends to lead visitors through the 126-year-old home on Spanish Street.

She greets visitors in the foyer with a smile, a hello and a "Welcome to the Glenn House."

She starts her tour in the foyer and tells guests the history of the house and how the historical society acquired it, focusing mostly on the people who had come into contact with the house.

Although some docents will focus more on the architecture or the furniture in the house, "I like to tell stories about the people who lived here," Sullivan said.

When she first agreed to become a docent, Polly Cotner, who handles and trains docents, dropped off piles of old newspapers, books and clippings about the Glenn House.

"I sat down and I went through all of those," Sullivan said. "I sat down and I wrote it out and then I typed it up and that was my talk."

Sullivan leads visitors through the Glenn House so easily, she could pass for a hostess showing dinner guests her own home. When she's not playing tour guide, Sullivan sits on the porch and reads or perches at a desk in the parlor to write letters.

"I really wasn't interested in older homes before I became a docent," she said. "But I think every day I come down here I like it more and more."

She and her husband recently traveled the South to see the old antebellum homes. Sullivan said she came back and still liked the Glenn House more.

"It's just a special, special home," she said.

Sullivan claims the dining room as her favorite room in the house. Part of her tour includes telling of the maroon Lincoln wallpaper covering the walls. The pattern was modeled after the paper that was in the booth in Ford's Theatre where Abraham Lincoln was shot.

Portraits of a husband and wife hang on opposite walls in the dining room. The woman in the painting, Sullivan said, was the lady of the house. She might be holding smelling salts often used to revive women who fainted after being let out of their corsets. Then again, Sullivan said, the object sort of looks like a key. The lady of the house often kept the pantry key with her so servants couldn't steal food. Or it could be a cigarette.

"I just like telling that story," Sullivan said.

Sullivan also serves as vice president of The Greater Historical Association of Cape Girardeau, which manages the Glenn House and the Reynolds House. The board plans to open the Glenn House for a few public dinners in the fall and have talked about docents wearing period clothing while the house is open.

"I already bought a shirt," Sullivan said, though the board has not decided anything.

Period clothing may be hot in the summer, but would feel fine at Christmas, Sullivan's favorite time at the Glenn House. As she sat in the foyer, the Glenn House scrapbook lay open to the "Christmas at the Glenn House" page.

Period clothing or her own, Sullivan said she wouldn't quit volunteering.

"If I didn't have this, I would be bored to death," she said.

She volunteers with 12 other docents and said they would always accept more -- anything to share her love of the Glenn House with others.

charris@semissourian.com

388-3641

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breakout:

Glenn House hours

1 to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Sunday

To volunteer at the Glenn House, call Polly Cotner at 335-8533.

Pertinent addresses:

325 S. Spanish St., Cape Girardeau, MO