President's Message
May 2003
Expanding partnerships. Capturing more oral histories. Heightening the visibility of the Society in the community. Providing educational opportunities. Those are some of the top goals outlined at the board's strategic planning session a couple of years ago, and they coalesced last year in the production of "Legacy: Santa Clarita's Living History," on local cable television. The show appears twice weekly — on Thursdays at 6:30 p.m., repeating Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. — on SCVTV Channel 20 throughout the Santa Clarita Valley.
Each 30-minute oral history episode has a team of individuals and organizations behind it, and some of the key players were recognized at the Society's annual Volunteer Recognition Dinner in April. Corporate awards for Outstanding Support went to the Society's two official "Legacy" partners — Comcast, and the SCV School & Business Alliance. Comcast provides the production facilities and technical assistance at its community access studio in Newhall, while the Alliance is responsible for the students who work as crew members through a formal School-to-Career Partnership.
One person who has been particularly helpful with historical research and guest coordination for "Legacy" is one of the Society's former board members, Jo Ellen Rismanchi. She received an individual Outstanding Service award, not just for her assistance with "Legacy," but also for the work she has done to hunt down previously unrecorded histories of Canyon Country, Agua Dulce and Acton.
Another former Society board member, Philip Scorza, was recognized for his contributions to "Legacy." Phil — whose own SCV history program, "Points of Interest," continues to appear on Channel 20 — is the instructor of the Hart District ROP's video production class whose students gain some hands-on experience by running the cameras and control equipment. Finally, Union Bank of California received the Society's appreciation for providing some of the hard costs of the "Legacy" production.
Although we're well into 2003, these were the awards for assistance received in 2002, and last year the City of Santa Clarita's Community Services division came through with grant funds for the construction of new museum displays. The city was thanked, as was Cowboy Poetry Festival guru Michael Marks individually. Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich was thanked for supplying the buses for the Society's motorcoach tour of Rancho Camulos, which was part of last year's poetry festival — which is held each year at the Melody Ranch Motion Picture Studio, where owners Andre and Renaud once again donated specified festival proceeds to the Society.
The SBC Foundation, formerly the Pacific Bell Foundation, was thanked for contributing funds to enable us to establish a high-speed Internet connection so visitors to Heritage Junction can access our digital photo and text archives (on the Web at scvhistory.com) from a kiosk inside the Saugus Train Station Museum. And Shirley Viraldo was recognized for doing one of the most important Society jobs of them all — folding and labeling your Dispatch every month and getting it into the mail. Thanks again, Shirley, and thanks also to Anne Kaulbach and Dee Winsman for coordinating the awards and dinner.
— Leon Worden, President
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Genealogy Group News
May 2003
The Genealogy Group held its meeting on Thursday, April 3. Helen Blancher gave a report on visiting the Palmdale Genealogy Club in March. The Palmdale Genealogy Club has purchased many good books with sources of genealogy information that had been placed with the Palmdale City Library. One of the things we learned at the meeting was that the Palmdale City Library had packed these books up and placed them in the basement of their facility and no longer available on the library shelves. The Palmdale group is trying to find a building to house these books, so that they will be available.
Eileen Keating brought her portable computer and her scanner and printer and demonstrated how she puts in her family pictures into the Legacy Family Tree Program. After the demonstration on how easy it is to put pictures in the Legacy Family Tree Program, a video on "Beginning Legacy Family Tree" was shown. The video explained how to start using the Legacy program with Geoffrey Rasmussen doing the demos. He demonstrated how to add family members to the database. Geoff demonstrated on the screen how and where to put in your sources that you have collected, so that you can easily refer back to see what you have done and where you have obtained the information. He also told us what kind of sources are the best to add to your family tree.
Time ran out and the group decided they would like to finish up the video at our May 1st meeting, which will be held at 7 p.m. at the Saugus Train Station. Everyone is invited to attend.
— Helen Blancher
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