This Monday’s White County Historical Society Dinner will feature none other than one of it’s own when Carlin Smock takes the podium. Now in her 16th year as a history teacher, Smock will detail her month-long trip to Washington D.C. this summer as part of the James Madison Fellowship Summer Institute. Smock joined the Historical Society a few years ago and she’s brought some needed fervor to the organization.
Somebody invited me to be on the board; I joined a few years ago and just really fell in love with it and the opportunities that came with it. There was a big need and working here in the school system, I thought I know some of these kids would help. That’s even how the history club got started. I thought if I could start a history club, I could probably get 12 kids to help out and here we are now with more than 50 that actively help. And that of itself, having younger people getting involved on their own time; they’re not just getting out of class, they’re coming in to volunteer and clean and that’s helped the history community in general by bringing generations together.
Many clubs and activities require a set of skills. Smock says math club participants are typically pretty decent at math. Kids who play sports usually have to be good at sports. With history it’s different though. There’s no prerequisite skillset required to share a love of history, be it world, national, or local.
And what I like to is a lot of sports and clubs you have to be good at this. With history, you don’t have to have any particular set of skills. There are opportunities to speak, to clean, to serve. I like that there’s something for everyone. We can sort of develop that however they want to. The fact they can feel comfortable and not pressured to do things they don’t want to do can be appealing as well.
Smock says her presentation will certainly feature some of the expected highlights of the trip, but she also hopes to provide some scope and context most folks don’t get to see.
I’m also going to tie some things that I learned. We see certain things in the media and they’re not what they always actually are. We’re in the middle of the country here as opposed to being there. There are so many things I learned. We got to talk to some important people…Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Royce Lamberth (senior judge of the US District Court for Washington D.C.) and I think there are some broad misconceptions about relationships in Washington and how they get along. The drama sells and I don’t think there’s quite as much drama as sometimes we want to believe. So I’m anxious to talk about some of those things we saw and some of their relationships to others that certain people have that we would never guess. I thought it was worth noting and it might change how we think about things a little bit.
Monday night’s dinner will be held at the First Christian Church in Carmi at 6pm. Reservations are due by Tuesday, November 11th. Call 618-384-4301 for details.
Listen to our entire discussion with Smock at Open Line ON DEMAND – White County Historical Society with Carlin Smock – WRUL-FM