The Future of Gulfport’s History

Gulfport Historical Society Asks the City for Help

By Lisa Leveroni The

Future of the Historical Society

The Gulfport Historical Society has asked the City of Gulfport for help. At the July 18 Council meeting, the City agreed. City Manager Jim O’Reilly asked the Council if the City would consider taking over the operations of the History Museum and Arts Center. He suggested that they do this under the guidance of the library system. This would, he said, ensure that both history and arts initiatives continued.

“The Historical Society and Arts Center just have not been able to generate the volunteer resources that they have had in the past,” O’Reilly said. He then introduced the President of the Gulfport Historical Society Center, Cathy Salustri Loper. (Full disclosure: Loper and her husband own this newspaper.)

“In the early 1980s, the first board of directors of the Gulfport Historical Society published a book called, Our Story of Gulfport, Florida (it’s out of print now and we’re reprinting it). If you were to go back to the 1980s and see when it [The Historical Society] was open, it was only open two hours on a weekday,” Loper said.

The History of Gulfport

“When I joined the board 10 years ago, the chief concern was volunteers,” Loper said. “We had some money. Apparently, someone left us a house at some point that we can only assume was sold and we must have received the profits, because our name wasn’t on any house.

“We’d been using that [money] ... and the board of directors had decided ... we would make the investment in an operations manager. Things went wonderfully. We didn’t really have to worry about the museum being open. But we were running out of money, so we had to stop that. We had to cut the hours back to five hours a week,” she continued, at which point the operations manager resigned. At that point, “we did go to the city manager and say, ‘we want you to know that this is changing’.”

The museum currently has no operating hours.

The Role of the Library

City Manager O’Reilly explained that the History Museum and Arts Center would come under the umbrella of Gulfport Public Library. The Gulfport Historical Society will continue to operate programs at both venues.

“It would be run as a direct lineage of the library, but we would also try to bring in a professional curator. It’s a ‘Friends of the Library’ situation,” he said.

“We’re hoping this is a way that we can continue to support the history, culture, and arts of the city with City support [by] keeping the buildings open,” Loper explained. “We have ab- solute support from a community that is amazing, but this amazing community all has other commitments and jobs.”

O’Reilly then asked if the Council would be amenable to the city “ingesting” the historical society.

“I am asking council consensus,” he said.

Vice Mayor Ray said, “We agree to ingesting it” to laughter.

History, Arts, and Culture are Alive and Well in Gulfport

“The board of directors of the Historical Society will continue its commitment to doing porch parties and art showings,” Loper said.

Gulfport City Council agreed to take the Historical Society and Art Center under its wing.

“Thank you. It is a really big deal for the city to take both arts and history under your purview. We really appreciate it,” Loper said.