HILLIARD DAVIDSON AMERICAN HISTORY CLUB

Reflection

For a while my friend Katherine Sarkel and I had been talking about forming a Civil War Re-enactors club at Davidson. The club would have included herself, my brother and I as well as any other re-enactors we could find. The club would meet up and recruit people who wanted to go to Civil War reenactments and other living history events. However, when we started going through the paper work we learned that it was not three people that were needed to create a club, but ten. It soon became very apparent that we were not going to be able to find ten people to create a reenactor's club, so our would-be club supervisor, Mr. Biddinger, suggested that we create an American History Club instead. After we secured enough members, we wrote a constitution and elected our first leaders. Katherine became the first President and I became the first Vice President. Some of the plans we had for the club was to create a traveling museum for Cub Scout groups and elementary schoolers and to also get involved with the Hilliard Historical Society. Our first event of the year was the Wildcat Excellent Adventure and it was a huge success. It was followed by the Civil War State House Ball. However, our first year had some problems too. We never planned out the traveling museum and we only helped out at the Historical Society once. At the end of the year we had lost some of the members we had gained and we were struggling to come up with fun and engaging meetings. In the midst of this, I was elected President. Before the school year was over we had an officers-only meeting to prepare for the coming year; we amended the constitution to include a Public Relations/Social Media Officer, we came up with fun meeting ideas, we planned out events with the Historical Society, set dates for future officer meetings and we started on plans for our new traveling museum called the Trinkets of Time. All of these new changes are to fulfil our new goal of "Expansion and Engagement." Our new "Expansion and Engagement" goal aims to draw in more members through events like the club fair and to engage members via social media and fun events to keep them in the club. Looking back on all that we have done as a club, and all that we plan to do, I am very excited. The partnership that we have formed with the Historical Society gives us many opportunities for our members to have a more hands on experience with history, and our first event of this year at the Wildcat Way Community Day was also a success. Personally, creating this club and leading it have taught me many things about leadership. I learned that communication is key when leading any organization, whether it be communication with my fellow officers, the Historical Society, or the club members. Being able to effectively get the word out is the only way an organization like this can run. If I could start the club over again I would have made sure members were more engaged the first year by creating more fun meetings and reaching out to the Historical Society sooner to create events with them. All in all it has been a great experience, and I am extremely excited for the coming year and the future of our club.