What an amazing two days. I met some really interesting powerful people including the House of Representatives, a couple senators, the first lady of Colorado, archaeologists and many more. It was probably the most important two days of my life. When you think of preservation what comes to mind? Preservation is……what? In my opinion preservation is our future. Without preserving our past we have don’t have a future in this business. That is really the message we tried to show our superiors. In my life preservation is preserving the past so we can have a future. Moving on….we learned the historical fund was going to be cut. That was extremely depressing. Everything we have worked for is funded by the help of that fund. I have a personal experience. My passion is the Broomfield Veteran’s Musuem. It used to be a very small one room museum. Now it is under construction. It is the only museum in the nation that is dedicated strictly to WWII veterans. So how do I convince “policy makers” to not cut this fund? Well we met with them at the Capitol and gave them our pitch. I said “We are attending the Youth Summit to collect ideas on how to “rebuild” the Broomfield Veterans Museum. This is the only museum in the nation dedicated strictly to WWII veterans. There aren’t many veterans left and they won’t be around forever. Pretty soon they will disappear. We can’t have their past disappear with them. Will you support this? Please don’t cut the Historical Fund.” I was surprised that one official actually said no. He invited us back to his office and I flat out told him…basically begged him not to cut the hisorical fund. With tears in my eyes I shared the story of the Broomfield Veterans Museum. He had a personal connection with my story, as he talked about preserving slave history. I walked out of his office with his card in my hand and a victory smile on my face. I was sure he was going to do the best he could to save the Historical Fund.
~Lexie
