Heard Museum Guild celebrates 60th with $194K donation to museum

May 6, 2016

Members of the Heard Museum’s dedicated corps of volunteers, the Heard Museum Guild, celebrated their organization’s 60th anniversary with an appreciation and awards dinner May 5 at which retiring Guild President Susan Kolman presented museum Director and CEO David Roche a donation to the museum of $194,500.

Kolman also told the gathering of more than 200 in the Steele Auditorium that Guild members totaled 58,814 volunteer hours from April 1, 2015, to April 1, 2016, bringing the organization’s all-time total number of volunteer hours to 1,204,005.

The evening also honored Guild members whose lifetime volunteer service hours reached milestones of 500, 1,500, 2,500, 5,000 and 10,000 hours. Awards were also presented to outstanding volunteer service as docents — known as Las Guias, or “the guides” — as well as to the Heard Museum Shop, Books & More bookstore and to the museum’s Billie Jane Baguley Library & Archives.

Guild members also welcomed their 2016-2017 officers: Mary Endorf, president; Sue Snyder, president-elect; Mary Bonsall, treasurer; Mary Ann Fast, secretary; and Stu Passon, nominating chair. Ten new members of Las Guias were also initiated at the dinner following their completion of a seven-month docent training course.

Founded in 1956, the Guild performs a variety of services the museum depends on throughout the year. They range from leading museum tours to planning and presenting the museum’s largest single annual event, the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market, each March. More than 11,000 attended the 58th annual Fair held March 5-6 of this year.