I N D I A N A S TAT E M U S E U M A N D H I S T O R I C S I T E S
CROSSROADS EMPLOYEE NEWSLETTER MARCH 2021
2005
By Renee Bruck The Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites lost its longest-serving employee when Ron Richards, senior 1988 research curator of paleobiology, passed away March 26. We also lost a dear friend, mentor, advocate and teacher. Ron’s work with the museum began as a volunteer trying to organize the natural history collections in 1979, and he became a full-time staff member in 1981 as an exhibits preparator. Throughout the years, Ron’s roles and titles within the museum system changed as he took on new projects and responsibilities, but one thing always remained unchanged – his ambition to discover more about animals that lived during Indiana’s Ice Age and share that knowledge with others. Ron took the time to listen to any questions that came his way, answered with enthusiasm, and usually spent another 20 minutes to give the questioner a little extra knowledge, Damon Lowe, senior curator of science and technology, said.
“It didn’t matter who you were,” Damon said. “He wanted to either be learning himself, or he wanted to be explaining what he knew.” Usually, more times than not, Ron would spend some time afterward worrying if he’d sufficiently answered someone’s question – or whether they needed to know something else to fully understand. “He was always there to help people,” Damon said. “He knew everybody, and everybody liked him.”
to commit to join in on a dig – for at least a day. Then, he’d usually try to get them hooked. It didn’t matter whether someone was in his department or even had experience. Ron would find something for every volunteer to do on those quests for peccary and other bones – or “pig digs” – whether that was helping with mapping or screening or something else altogether. “He truly made it an institutional effort. He would figure out what your skill set was,” Damon said. “All because of Ron’s sheer force of personality.” Jay Dishman, site manager of Whitewater Canal State Historic Site, remembers going on some of the earliest “pig digs” with Ron.
Megenity, 1987
But, Damon says, there was usually an ulterior motive to Ron’s helpful personality. At some point in the conversation, Ron would almost always bring up Megenity Cave, located in the Patoka Lake area of Crawford County, and try to get someone
During the third or fourth dig at Megenity, the crew wasn’t finding much – not even bone fragments – in the buckets of dirt they were bringing out of the ground, Jay said. During a lunch break to a convenience store, Ron and Jay noticed a toy that included small farm animals that were less than an inch tall and decided to purchase them. continued on next page