Myra O'Canna, Shirley Aleman, Milrene Goodloe, Laura Martinez, and Rebecca Ullrich staffed the Corporate Archives and History table at the 2004 Retiree Picnic on May 27. As always, business was brisk as the retirees stopped by to look at the Plowshare exhibit, admire photos from the 2003 picnic, share information about Sandia's history, and help identify photographs from the Still Photo Collection.
This is one of the most rewarding events that Archives and History participates in during the year. It is always fun and offers an opportunity for us to connect directly with the individuals who made the stories we tell. Several retirees donated items to the Corporate Archives. A few brought documents to the picnic, knowing that Corporate Archivist Myra O'Canna would be there, while others left contact information so Myra could collect items from them later. Thanks go to these individuals for their contributions, which have been accessioned into the Archives' collections:
This year, the picnic was tinged with some sadness, as it was the last one to be held at the Coronado Club. Retirees reminisced and commented with appreciation on the role the Club had played in their lives and those of their families. The Lab News confirmed everyone's concerns in its May 28 article announcing that the Coronado Club will close October 1 after 54 years of serving the Sandia community.
The Club once occupied a central place in social lives of Sandians — when it opened on June 9, 1950, many employees lived on base and Albuquerque had not grown so far out to the east, leaving it hard to access recreational activities in the evenings. By 2004, however, membership in the Club has been in steady decline for several years. As the Lab News noted, only "7 percent of eligible retirees are members and 10 percent of eligible employees are members." Sandians chose homes in scattered locations as Albuquerque grew, and the Club no longer forms a focal point for community interaction. The expectation is that its other services will be provided elsewhere.
Archives and History tried a new activity at our table this year. We asked retirees to fill in the blank after the statement "If I were President of Sandia for one day, I would________." The responses were varied, but the predominant answer was, "Keep the Coronado Club open."
The responses, in order of popularity, were:
And, are you listening, Paul?
Yikes!
Of course, several folks indicated they wouldn't want such a job and don't envy Paul Robinson his workload at all.
Corporate Archives and History depends on the ability to access old information quickly in response to customer requests and on-going research efforts. Over time, however, the nature of our research tools and our definition of "quickly" has changed significantly, largely due to the introduction of desktop computing and the plethora of information available through it. To bring some of the older information and research sources forward into a more modern research setting requires a great deal of indexing — of the Lab News, of the Sandia telephone books, of collections, and of photos. Indexing is time-consuming and requires an eye for detail. Archives and History has been fortunate in its personnel choices in this area. Shirley Aleman serves as the Still Photo Clerk, working her way through the cataloging of Sandia's Still Photo Collection. Her success in this area is reflected in a related article. The program also uses student intern labor to chip away at our ongoing indexing workload.
Current Student Intern Laura Martinez serves the Corporate Archives and History Program in a variety of ways. In addition to providing assistance on special projects as they arise — e.g., labeling photographs in support of cultural resources management, copying information from old issues of the Lab News for retirement celebrations, and identifying photos with retirees at the Retiree Picnic — she spends the bulk of her time at Sandia doing some of the indexing required to support the archival collections. She is continuing the on-going (never-ending?) indexing of the Sandia telephone books. Of particular note, she recently completed our internal index of the Lab News article titles and photo captions. This is a great achievement as the effort has been in progress since 1996 under a series of students.
Laura received her Associates Degree from TVI this month and will be converting to an LTE. As she is staying on with us, she is becoming the Recorded Information Management Department (9612) webmaster — implementing the design of the new look for the electronic Sandia Records Management Manual, which will be released by the end of the fiscal year, as well as routine web page maintenance. All that and she still says she likes working here!