POPLAR FOREST ATTRACTS VOLUNTEERS FROM ACROSS THE NATION
Poplar Forest Newsletter, Fall 2002

Distance is no obstacle for some volunteers.

Three people from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Ohio periodically volunteer to help restoration and archaeology staff.

Poplar Forest depends on about 150 dedicated volunteers in Virginia for the daily operation of the site. The out-of-state volunteers aren’t seen as frequently at Poplar Forest, but their presence is still felt.

Norman Lamonde of Boston likes to get his hands on history.

A project manager the Turner Construction Company, Lamonde has set up shop in his home to work on reproductions for Poplar Forest. For the hands-on history program he has re-created Jefferson’s traveling polygraph (a twin-pen device that copied as Jefferson wrote) and the lap desk that Jefferson used to draft the Declaration of Independence.

“I enjoy studying early American history, architecture, and life, and by studying Jefferson one can learn so much about all of these things and much more,” says Lamonde. “As a craftsperson and builder who grew up with tools in hand, I appreciate very much the interest and respect that Jefferson, a president, had for fine craftsmanship and the tradespeople who produced it. The restoration work that is being done at Poplar Forest is of the highest quality and brings back the respect for the work of human hands. It’s an honor to be part of preserving history for this and future generations to enjoy and appreciate.”

Connecticut woodworker Rick Krynick is one of only a few people who can say he has worked on Thomas Jefferson’s privy.

Krynick, the principal of Colonial Woodworkers, has volunteered several times a year since 1998. Working side by side Poplar Forest’s restoration carpenters is a “dream come true.

“I always loved the history and architecture of Virginia,” he says. He and his wife honeymooned in Virginia, and have visited almost annually for 15 years.

Krynick has helped replaced chestnut shingles on a Jefferson privy, built a staircase inside the house leading from Jefferson’s bedroom to the ground level, and installed reproduction hardware on the faux-grained doors.

“When you’re walking around Poplar Forest, Jefferson feels close to you, and you start imagining what he was doing here. You think, ‘He was doing all this 200 years ago.’ You start imagining his workers doing what you’re doing now,” Krynick says.

He’s drawn to Jefferson because “he just loved life and was interested in everything, including my interests of architecture and gardening. I find him a fascinating person.”

A chance stop at a Virginia welcome center has led Joan Holmes of Medina, Ohio, to fulfill a youthful dream.

When younger, Holmes had dreamed of studying archaeology. Instead, she married and raised a family, channeling her love of history into teaching it at the Medina Christian Academy.

In the mid-1990s she stopped at a Virginia welcome center and saw a brochure for Poplar Forest. She subsequently learned about Poplar Forest’s archaeology field school for teachers. She had to do it.

“It was fun. I liked it so much and the people here were so friendly, I wanted to come back,” Holmes says.

And she does, every summer, helping staff archaeologists uncover the story of Jefferson’s plantation and its evolving story. At first she excavated for artifacts.

Holmes’s first excavated a slave quarter site. “I was excited by my first find, which was a nail,” she notes. “What really touched me though was finding a plain button – a piece of metal with a loop. It hit me then about slavery. You’re talking about a person who had this plain button.”

Now she works inside, transcribing farm journals and crossmending artifacts.

She likens crossmending to doing a jigsaw puzzle. “I enjoy putting together different pieces of ceramics to see if we can identify an object,” Holmes says.“I also like adding to people’s knowledge of history. This is an exploration of the unknown, the finding out of how people lived.”