Pam Crow This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. www.wacotrib.com

   www.wacotrib.com/news/content/ - [Cached]

   Published on: 3/10/2007   Last Visited: 3/10/2007

   After 20 years of homemaking, Pam Crow is ready to get out of the house.
   
   The longtime executive director of the Historic Waco Foundation, responsible for overseeing the care of five historic Waco homes, is leaving her position for a job at Baylor University.
   
   For two decades, Crow has served as mistress of the five post-Civil War homes, maintaining each dwelling as if it had been frozen in time.
   
   Nineteenth-century wooden shutters must be replaced by handmade imitations, decades of paint layers must be stripped to identify original colors, and trinkets on the fireplace mantle must be dusted with the gentlest of care.
   
   Then there's the monotony of running a nonprofit, keeping the books, preparing reports for the board and doing outreach, trying to draw others to the mission of preserving Waco's past.
   
   And Crow says she's loved every moment.
   
   Even so, after two decades of service, the 62-year-old Waco native says she was somewhat afraid of becoming frozen in time herself.
   
   "I'm out of fresh ideas," she said the day of her farewell reception this week. "After you've been in a position for a while, I think you run out of fresh ideas, and I wanted to make a move at this point in my life."
   
   The move won't be far. Next week, Crow becomes associate director of cashier services at Baylor. She holds a degree in accounting.
   
   Her new office will be in Baylor's Clifton Robinson Building, three blocks from the Hoffmann House, the 1890s Queen Anne-style Victorian cottage where the Historic Waco Foundation is housed.
   
   Crow leaves her former office , once a bedroom , with a deep sense of accomplishment.
   
   Less than halfway into her tenure, she proposed the lofty idea of getting Waco's historic homes accredited by the American Association of Museums, a goal met in 2003. It means the historic Waco homes have now met the highest standards of excellence in preservation, she said.
   ...
   Plenty of the 976 foundation members, including 33 board members and more than 100 volunteers, will miss Crow.
   ...
   "It may be a struggle for a while without Pam here to anchor it," Watson said.