SOHA is featuring our members and presenters of SOHA 2020. This week, our spotlight is on Sarah Moorhead, who wrote the following piece about her experiences with SOHA. Sarah has been a dedicated SOHA member for about 20 Years. She has served as the SOHA President (2008-2009), and she received the SOHA Life Achievement Award (2013).
“SOHA AND ME”
By: Sarah Moorhead
In the 1980’s and 1990’s SOHA would send experienced oral historians to other cities to provide workshops. Sylvia Arden and Rose Diaz gave two workshops in Arizona which I attended, but it wasn’t until the Museum Guild President and retired Assistant Librarian, Mary Olive Mott, asked me to restart the Mesa Historical Society’s (MHS) oral history program, which had been in hiatus since 1985, that I actually began oral history work in 1998.
My oral history emphasis has been on the community of Mesa, Arizona. Most of my oral history interviewees have been retired City of Mesa employees. Great population growth necessitated changes in city position responsibilities; interviewees illuminated the character of the city and its history from the 1970’s when it was one-third its current size.
Two other special narrators have been Angy Booker, a daughter in the first African American family to settle in Mesa, who in her 90’s could recount Mesa in 1915. Wayne Pomeroy, one of the most progressive mayors in Mesa, kindly became a major donor to SOHA. Other projects included:
(1) In 2005-2006, when MHS participated in a grant which digitized its old cassette tapes
(2) A professor at Arizona State University’s Architectural School asked us to interview for a Charette (quick architectural project) in a changing area
(3) The library’s collection of interviews on tape were digitized one or two tapes a week when volunteering. Now, another volunteer is selecting subject headings and inputting them into a database for public access
(4) At present, the print shop is binding copies of the interview of Mary Olive Mott for her former library staff. Otherwise, I have mostly been conducting workshops for interested individuals. The best ones were with Danette Turner, who turned them into fun events.
The first SOHA conference that I attended was in Long Beach, in 2000, in a small hotel, walking distance from the Queen Mary. In 2001, I helped with the Tempe conference when asked to do so. Officer participation was as secretary in 2004, vice president in 2008, when I chaired my first conference, followed by being president in 2008-2009.
It has been a pleasure to be the liaison to the donors of The Eva Tulene Watt awards, which were initiated in 2006 from donations by Mary Palevsky and Keith Basso. The Ak-Chin Community generously has supported the Watt scholarships to our conference since then and it has been an honor to work with them. Otherwise, when requested, I have just filled in for committees, such as the silent auction, or chairing the 2014 and 2017 conferences. The SOHA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013 was a great and unexpected honor, still extremely meaningful to me.
How did my first real connection come to SOHA? When Karen Harper drove me across LA after the 2002 conference near the old train station rather than my having to take a pricy taxi. It has been the wonderful SOHA members who have kept me engaged and involved for 20 years.
Southwest Oral History Association 