Throughout a career in emergency management, Susan Jones-Hard has dealt people who were going through traumatic events.
In 1999, when the Columbine High School shooting occurred, she was the Emergency Management Director and Response Coordinator for the Colorado Department of Health . Susan worked long hours coordinating the public information response, setting up news feeds to media outlets around the world.
After Sept. 11, 2001, she was one of 13 civilians chosen to attend an 18-month master’s course at the Naval Postgraduate School in California in domestic preparedness and security studies, which became known as Homeland Security. Many of her classmates were first responders from New York City, she said.
Susan is now the director of the Henry County Museum, where she started last week. After the jobs she has held, she appreciates the fact that working at the museum will be less stressful.
“When the phone rings, I know it won’t be bad news,” she said. “Here, it’s meeting people and seeing things that are positive.”
Susan was born and raised in Clinton, a fourth-generation graduate of Clinton High School. After college, she worked in Nevada, Mo., as a social worker, then traveled throughout the United States, Canada and Europe as part of the staff with Up With People.
Susan moved to Tucson, Ariz., and worked as the Emergency Services director for the Red Cross, then to Denver, where she held the same job and met future spouse Greg Hard, who was also in emergency services.
In 2005, they moved back to Missouri to run the family’s century farm after Susan’s father, uncle and brother passed away. Susan also worked as the managing director of the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security Mobile Education Team, organizing seminars on cybersecurity, weather emergency response and disaster- relief response plans for governors and mayors of large cities.
In 2018, she was hired by MU Extension as the nutrition and health specialist for four counties. Most recently, she was director of the Kaysinger Basin Regional Planning Commission.
Susan also served for 12 years on the Clinton School District Board, including terms as president and vice-president of the board, and was the public relations coordinator for the Clinton High School Alumni Association. Classmates may remember Susan as “Miss CHS” of 1979, when she had her photo on the cover of the Clinton Eye.
One hundred years earlier, Susan’s great-grandmother, Ella Highnote, was in the first graduation class of Clinton High School, the Class of 1879. The family farm dates from 1881.
Susan said she has always been a friend of the Henry County Museum, and once was a fill-in docent. She was stationed in the Courtney Thomas section of the museum’s music room, she recalled, and spent the time between visitors reading about Thomas, an opera singer who grew up in Clinton and toured Europe in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
So far, Susan has two priorities in her new job. One is to raise money for the museum. The next fundraiser is June 22 at 5 p.m., and features a chicken dinner cooked by Jim Kalberloh, a state legislator and former owner of the Landmark Restaurant in Lowry City.
The other is to get more people through the doors, especially locals who haven’t visited the museum since they were children. The museum has grown to include six buildings, two of which, the Anheuser-Busch Building and the Dorman House, are in the National Register of Historic Places.
“I was drawn to the fact that the Henry County Museum has so much depth and significance compared to other museums,” Susan said.
The newest acquisition is the Exchange Building, which holds exhibits of mid-century modern furnishings, including a pink kitchen, plus vintage toys from the baby-boomer era. A mural of a train station with a train arriving, with passengers waiting to board, captures the romance of that era.
The Museum Annex, the main entrance to the museum at 203 W. Franklin, houses an art gallery, a genealogy library and a walk-through early 20th century village, including a dry goods store complete with a pot-belly stove surrounded by chairs and table with a checkerboard, ready for a game. Down the brick-paved street is a pharmacy with a soda fountain, a doctor’s office and a bank.
In addition to the Music Room and the Veteran’s Room in the Anheuser-Busch Building are reproductions of a parlor, kitchen and bedrooms furnished as they would have looked in the pre-electric age. In the back room and a side room of the Anheuser-Busch Building, a distribution center built for the brewery in the late 1800s, are extensive displays showing the history of businesses and industries in Henry County, including farming, coal mining, potteries and chicken hatcheries.
The museum is in the process of creating a Communities Room, featuring memorabilia from Clinton, Tightwad, Coal, Calhoun and Blairsville. The museum is looking for photographs and records from the schools, as well as people’s memories of them.
Across Franklin Street from the museum is the Homestead, a reproduction of a mid-1800s Missouri farm with a dog-trot log cabin, mule barn, corn crib and smoke house. Children’s programs are held in a one-room schoolhouse, circa 1890, by a school marm in period attire, giving lessons from McGuffey Readers, math lessons on slates with chalk, and geography lessons on roll-down maps.
A free activities day for children and families, held annually at the Homestead in the fall, features games and crafts. Children especially like sitting in the wooden desks and playing school.
Across the street from the west side of the Homestead is the ante-bellum Dorman House, the oldest two-story brick house in Clinton. The house is entering the final stages of renovation to stabilize the foundation and walls, according to Nick Smith, assistant museum director. The new floors are down, Nick said, the walls repainted and the staircase re-installed. Once the furnishings have been moved back in, the house will open again to the public, hopefully by Olde Glory Days, July 3 through July 7.
A reception will be scheduled for the public to meet the new director. Check the Henry County Mo. Museum facebook page for information.
The Henry County Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 am. to 4 p.m. For more information, go to the Henry County Mo. Museum website.
