I am honored to have been elected last fall as your CAPPA Historian. My qualifications for this role are that I have supported CAPPA for many years (as co-chair and member of Professional Development committee), and now am old and retired.
My predecessor, Art Jones (Black Hills State University) has done marvelous work developing our assets of annual reports, newsletters, photos, and other materials. He wrote in the CAPPA Newsletter, Summer 2012, Issue 147 that during CAPPA Conference 2013 in Galveston, Texas, we would be celebrating CAPPA’s first 60 years. Today, we’re looking forward to celebrating our 69th anniversary in October at the 2022 CAPPA Conference in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Art asked in newsletter #149 for CAPPA’s help, as he was missing 63 issues of the newsletter. With CAPPA’s help, 17 issues were found, so now we are only missing 21 issues. (In that newsletter he also noted that APPA celebrated its first 100 years during the Minneapolis 2013 conference.)
CAPPA’s “other materials” include what is know as the “Texas Gavel” as shown below through the years.
Here is my summary of CAPPA’s Historian role:
• 2000—Black Hills State was host for CAPPA’s 50th anniversary. During his year as president, Art Jones asked Ed Rice to store the various known CAPPA materials.
• 2004—Ed wrote about this, under the title Historian in CAPPA Newsletter, Winter, Issue 125.
• 2009—Ed resigned as CAPPA Historian (Spring, Issue 138).
• 2009—Art was elected as CAPPA Historian (Winter, Issue 139).
• 2014—Randy Culver (Black Hills State) was elected as Historian, as Art had stepped down (Winter, Issue 153).
• 2016—President Ed Heptig (Kansas State) had an opening on Executive Committee, as David Millay (UA – Little Rock) had to step away from his role as Membership Chair. Ed asked Randy to fill David’s role, and asked Art to again take the role of Historian, until others could be considered for election at Little Rock 2016 (Summer 2016, Issue 157). Randy and Art were elected that fall to these roles (Spring 2017, Issue 158).
• 2021—Art again wanted to step down. As a recent retiree (UN at Kearney), I was approached to consider the role, agreed to stand for election, and was elected at the 2021 CAPPA Conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
I am grateful to the membership for my election as the fifth person to hold this role (counting Art twice). I am grateful to UNK and Michael Cremers for agreeing to store the material. I look forward to serving CAPPA through the maintenance of this information. I am very grateful that I was able to write this article from the comfort of my home, reviewing news-letter articles already scanned and stored on the CAPPA cloud drive. My thanks to Art Jones for his efforts, and his example.
If anyone has CAPPA newsletter copies they can share with me, I am in need of the following issues: 1— 3; 10—17; 20—22; 26—28; 129, 130, 131, and 137.
I look forward to your questions related to CAPPA’s history, and your suggestions concerning what you want to hear. See you in Lincoln, Nebraska. Let’s make some history!!!
– Lee McQueen, CAPPA Historian
