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Milken Center gets visitor No. 15,000
Vickie Leatherman got a little more than she bargained for during a Wednesday trip to Fort Scott.
The Andover, Kan., resident was one of 43 people on the Air Capital Active People overnight group tour from Wichita that came through town yesterday to ride the trolley tour, visit the Fort Scott National Historic Site and Gordon Parks Center for Culture and Diversity, shop and take in other sights.
But it was the stop at the Lowell Milken Center that proved most memorable for Leatherman. She was the 15,000th visitor to the center, which has been in Fort Scott since 2007.
"It was really a shock," Leatherman said.
For being the 15,000th visitor, Leatherman received a copy of the book "Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project" by Jack Mayer, signed by Lowell Milken Center Director Norm Conard and Program Director Megan Felt, a copy of the Irena Sendler Project DVD and a Life in a Jar cup.
Leatherman said the tour group had watched the Hallmark Hall of Fame film, "The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler," prior to taking the tour of Fort Scott.
Leatherman said she enjoyed the film, Felt's presentation on the Life in a Jar project and her account of her trip to Poland in 2001 to meet Sendler.
"I really enjoyed learning about the discovery of an unsung hero," Leatherman said. "There are lots of people out there whose stories need to be told."
The "Life in a Jar" project chronicled the life of Sendler who helped save 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. Felt was one of the original students who told Sendler's story and developed the project under Conard's instruction.
Leatherman said if given the chance to return to Fort Scott, she would "like to come back and take a little more time."
Conard talked to the group about the purpose of the center, which helps discover, develop and communicate the stories of unsung heroes who have made a profound and positive difference on the course of history.
Since it opened, the center has hosted visitors from 47 states and 43 countries. A sign posted inside the center says the center has reached 5,000 schools and 575,000 students.
Conard said when the idea for the facility came about, the original plan was just to have an office, but at the suggestion of Lowell Milken, an area for exhibits was included and a plan was made to house them in downtown Fort Scott.
"When we first started, we didn't consider exhibits a part of it," Conard said. "Lowell Milken suggested it and it has since been a big part of our growth and the outreach of our work ... The exhibits are a big hit."
While visiting the center, members of the tour group also viewed the center and heard a portion of a song sung in Hebrew by local student Mary Fischer, who portrays an orphan in the Life in a Jar play. Conard said Fischer sings the song throughout the play and has developed two projects on unsung heroes herself.
Conard said the center, which is beginning its sixth year, has grown since it first opened five years ago.
"We can hardly keep up with all the contacts in schools all over the world," he said. "We get hundreds of requests to develop project-based learning. The number of groups has increased every year."
The center's various exhibits, such as its Osage exhibit and African-American exhibit, are popular draws, Conard said.
"A lot of people wander in after seeing the sign outside," he said.
The center also includes a display on Father Emil Kapaun, an unsung Korean War hero who provided spiritual and emotional guidance to men in a POW camp, and the Ken and Ann exhibit, which tells the story of two white students who befriended the courageous Little Rock Nine.
Conard said he and staff at the center are currently working on an idea to expand the center sometime in the future.
"We hope something will develop," he said. "We're very limited with the amount of space that we have."
For more information on the center, visit www.lowellmilkencenter.org.