otherSeptember 5, 2017
Longtime Glenn House volunteers Tom and Donna Grantham plan to leave area
The Glenn House in Cape Girardeau has a wide front porch perfectly built to capture cool breezes and long chats, and that's just what Tom and Donna Grantham did one cool August morning to talk about their contributions to the Cape Girardeau historical preservation scene, before they move to Florida later this year...
The Glenn House in Cape Girardeau has a wide front porch perfectly built to capture cool breezes and long chats, and that's just what Tom and Donna Grantham did one cool August morning to talk about their contributions to the Cape Girardeau historical preservation scene, before they move to Florida later this year.
Donna says when she and Tom moved back to Cape Girardeau in 2000, she was recruited to volunteer at the Glenn House by her uncle, Leland Shivelbine, who had already been involved with the house museum and thought it was something she'd enjoy, she says.
"But I kept thinking, this is [Tom's] realm," she says, and as soon as he retired in 2009, he jumped on board.
Donna Grantham was president of the board for "quite awhile," she says, but the board members are all very active volunteers.
All 15 members do at least one aspect of volunteer work at the Glenn House, Donna says.
Another 15 to 20 volunteers are in the core group, she says, and dozens more help out throughout the year, between special events like the Christmas celebration and with the spring clean-up. Volunteers also lead tours, clean, paint, water flowers, "really anything that needs to be done, that's what volunteers do," Donna says.
The board also keeps in communication with Old Town Cape and the Convention and Visitors Bureau, Donna says, and tries to get the word out in whatever way that makes sense, whether through brochures or social media or updating the Glenn House website.
Beyond publicity, the Granthams point to Tom's background in business administration and Donna's in-office management and banking as what they consider an important aspect of their contribution.
"We've always felt it's vitally important that the members of our organization, that the community members know where the money's going," Donna says.
To that end, an annual report with revenue and expenditure categories is prepared each year now and distributed to every member.
About 200 people are members, Donna says, as some of the 130 memberships are held by couples and families.
Not that the Glenn House is the only endeavor the Granthams have been involved with since their return to Cape Girardeau in 2000. Tom belongs to the Noon Optimists in Cape Girardeau, and recently retired from the Jackson public schools' foundation board. He was on the historic preservation committee in Cape Girardeau for a time, as was Donna, who has also worked to organize class reunions for Cape Girardeau Central High School and been an active member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, among other endeavors.
Their interest in history is evident. Tom can recite the entire history of the Glenn House on cue, and it is a long history.
The house was built in 1883 by Edward Dean, who gave the house to his daughter Lula, who had married David Glenn in 1881. Originally a more generic style home, it was later remodeled into a Queen Anne-style Victorian mansion.
Electricity and plumbing were added later, as was central heat.
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The house fell on hard times after David Glenn, who was a bank president, had to declare bankruptcy when his bank failed in 1914. The house changed hands several times over the next few decades, and by the late 1960s, it was vacant and in pretty rough shape, according to Tom.
In the 1960s, Robert Erlbacher with the Missouri Dry Dock near the Glenn House bought the property to renovate into offices for his business. Unfortunately, Tom says, Erlbacher died suddenly in 1969, and his heirs did not share his vision for the house. They gifted the house to the newly-formed Historical Association of Greater Cape Girardeau, which spent the next decade holding fundraisers and slowly but surely restoring the house.
"The house was in bad shape, about to be lost," Tom says, when it was first taken over by the association.
The Glenn House opened as a house museum in 1974, and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
"The house opened partially to show what they were doing and maintain interest as rooms were finished, but I don't think work was completely done until about 1980," Tom says.
"They really worked very, very hard to make sure everything was historically correct and period correct," Donna says. "They did a lot of research."
That attention to detail has paid off, Donna says, as she and other volunteers have heard strongly positive feedback from visitors who have traveled extensively and toured many homes of a similar vintage.
Tom says in the last few years, there's been a shift in focus toward what each visitor is curious about, to tailor each tour toward what the group wants to know about.
"I think that really has helped us in the last few years," he says, having that flexibility rather than a set script.
That's the norm among house museums, he says, but with the Glenn House, their mission is to show how the Glenns would have lived -- as though they'd just stepped out, he says.
As to their transition out, Donna says they've already started handing their duties off to other board members and volunteers.
"We don't want to see that budgeting and reporting go away, for instance," she says.
But they're confident their work will continue in their absence. They have grandchildren on each coast, and they're young enough to enjoy Florida. A lot of factors came together, she says.
"It's just the right time to go," Donna says. "We're moving on to the next stage of life."
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