The National Trust’s Chief Preservation Officer shares how the resilience of
places can help guide us through this crisis.
(To ensure delivery, please add [email protected] [[email protected]] to your address book.)


JOIN
[{CAMPAIGNPAGE_URL~19791~[link removed]}]
RENEW
[{CAMPAIGNPAGE_URL~19790~[link removed]}]
DONATE
[{CAMPAIGNPAGE_URL~19789~[link removed]}]

[[link removed]]

Dear Preservation Supporter,

Yesterday, at one of our National Trust Historic Sites, I was pleased to join a
group of almost 50 people for a tour. We were at Montpelier
[[link removed]] in Orange, Virginia, which was home to President James and Dolley Madison and a
significant community of free and enslaved African Americans across two
centuries.

Don’t worry, I was still social distancing: Our walk in the woods together at
Montpelier was virtual.

During the tour, Matt Reeves, Montpelier’s Director of Archaeology and Landscape
Restoration, guided us through some of the newly discovered sites on the
property. Among them were remarkable irrigation ditches, some extending for a
quarter of a mile, that had been engineered and dug by enslaved people to make
it possible to grow tobacco in bottomlands. As Matt reminded us, over time this
landscape has been planted and harvested repeatedly, gone fallow, and then
turned to forest—all the while holding its rich stories until we discover them
anew.

Or, to put it more simply: Montpelier is resilient. This site, like thousands
upon thousands of historic places across the nation, embodies our capacity to
persevere, adapt, and endure in ways that are incredibly inspiring, especially
in a time of crisis and uncertainty.

Another such place is the home of Dr. Justina Ford in Denver, Colorado, which
just received a grant from our 2019 Partners in Preservation program, sponsored
by American Express. Dr. Ford was Colorado’s first licensed female African
American doctor, but she was denied access to hospitals because of her race.
Instead, she practiced gynecology, obstetrics, and pediatrics from her home for
half a century, treating patients who were not able to access other medical
care. They often paid her in all that they had—their own goods and services.

Across her remarkable career, Dr. Ford experienced discrimination and unfairness
over and over again. But she kept working, kept caring, kept healing.
Fortunately, Dr. Ford’s home was saved from demolition in the 1980s by the Five
Points Community and Historic Denver, and its stories are still told there at
the Black American West Museum & Heritage Center. Today, her home and her story
remind us of the deep legacy of courage and perseverance that undergirds the
heroic medical professionals on the frontlines of the fight against the
coronavirus today.

Historic places also yield contemporary stories of resilience. In historic
commercial districts across the country, small businesses are showing incredible
creativity and adaptability as they continue to serve and sustain their
communities during this crisis. Our colleagues at Main Street America are collecting and sharing these stories online,
[[link removed]] from the inspirational quotes posted in Downtown Albany Georgia’s storefronts
to a virtual farmer’s market sponsored by Downtown SLO in San Luis Obispo,
California.

Through their powerful stories and capacity to adapt, historic places offer
comforting and inspiring evidence of both our cultural and our natural
resiliency. At the National Trust, we’ll continue to tell the stories of places
that sustain us, and we hope you will continue to share with us the places that
are helping you get through these challenging times. While we often talk about
saving places, it is worth remembering that sometimes those places save us right
back.

Warm regards,

Katherine Malone-France
Chief Preservation Officer

P.S. Matt Reeves’ next virtual woods exploration will be on April 18,
[[link removed]] when he will be joined by naturalist and poet Dr. Lanham to explore
Montpelier's naturally reclaimed plantation landscape as a site of contemplation
and healing. Dr. Lanham will read excerpts from his poem, "The Wood Thrush." You
can also tour all our Historic Sites visually with a new series on
SavingPlaces.org, starting with Sacred Places.
[[link removed]]


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[[link removed]] [[link removed]] [[link removed]] [[link removed]]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

© National Trust for Historic Preservation
2600 Virginia Avenue NW, Suite 1100, Washington, DC 20037
202.588.6000 | 800.944.6847 | 202.588.6038 (fax)

SavingPlaces.org [[link removed]] | Manage Email Preferences
[[link removed]]