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05 October 2001

Report: Behind the Scenes at the Smithsonian

One of the benefits of SAS membership is that members who visit the Smithsonian Natural History Museum can be treated to special behind-the-scenes tours. Randy Davis is the first SAS member who, to our knowledge, has actually done it. Below is a letter

Nancy,

I received Shawn's email on membership and have renewed for a year and made a donation on the web site. I appreciate what you are trying to do. You may not remember, but you helped introduce my family and I to Sally Shelton at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, and we had a wonderful tour with Sally behind the scenes of the museum. My thank you notes to all have remained on my desk, not sent, for 7 weeks now as the usual chaos swirled around us when we returned from vacation.

Sally Shelton, Collections Officer for the museum, met us an hour before the museum was officially opened and escorted us through the dinosaur collection of the museum for an hour. She knew a great deal about the details of the exhibits and this personal tour continued for an hour. When the museum opened and became a little noisey, Sally took us back in the museum storage area and introduced us to her boss; Jann Thompson/ Collections Manager for the Museum. Between Sally and Jann, I have never met anyone with a more thorough knowledge of so many aspects of archaeology and fossils. Jann took us from one case of fish fossils to another of plants, mammals and so on... in rapid fire succession. It was a wonderful 30 minutes we spent going through ancient fossils that are not on display in the museum because of space or budget constraints. Sally and Jann explained that the reason the quality of the items was so wonderfully high, was that this National Museum receives specimens from all National parks and U.S. government lands, in addition to the many private collections that are bequeathed to the government. My 9 and 13 year old girls (who'd often like to go to the pool instead of a museum) were oohing and awwing the whole time in the back... Sally and Jann had them (and us) completely captivated.

We saw many wonderful monuments and alot of history in Washington DC, but my family all agreed that the Natural History Museum and the tour you and Sally helped arrange was one of the biggest highlights of our trip.

I hope the best for the SAS enterprise, and would like to thank you again for helping to arrange such a wonderful tour for my family and me.

Please pass a copy of this on to Shawn.

Sincerely,

Randy Davis