Volunteer at Historic Bethabara Park

Historic Bethabara Park offers a variety of special events to the public throughout the year. These large events require a lot of manpower, and we need your help! We need volunteers to assist with tent set up, parking, loading wagon rides, selling bottled water, providing information, and handing out programs. Specific events offer additional volunteer opportunities. Have fun and meet people in the community.

We'd love to hear from you. Please join us in creating great celebrations.

Are you interested in volunteering at our special events? Please contact Assistant Director Diana Overbey (doverbey@triadbiz.rr.com, (336)924-8191) for more details!

Thank you to our wonderful volunteers!

2010 Volunteer of the Year - O'Briant Richard "Dick" Ayscue
  

Dick Ayscue has played numerous roles at Historic Bethabara Park over the years: trustee, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, mentor of the reconstructed 1759 Community Garden, and special event “parker” extraordinaire. Dick Ayscue deserves a lifetime award for volunteerism, for he has served with distinction on many boards and is a beloved member of a number of non-profit organizations. He is an inspiration to the members of the Historic Bethabara Park staff and to the many people he has worked with at the Park. Dick says that he “tries to do something good for someone every day,” a commitment evident to anyone who knows him.

Dick Ayscue is a former vice president of Thalhimers NC and SC who moved to Winston-Salem in 1969. He has served as President of both the Winston-Salem and North Carolina Merchants Associations. He retired from Hecht’s stores in 1991 and currently serves on the board of DataMax Corp., a non-profit organization that promotes the economy in Winston-Salem. Dick brings his management expertise and inestimable people skills to each of the many roles he has undertaken at the Park. A natural leader, one commonly hears the refrain “Let’s ask Dick” among Bethabara community gardeners. He is warm and funny, wise and compassionate. We count ourselves lucky that he has taken us on. Dick represents the Park at its best.

2009 Volunteer of the Year - Keets Farquhar Taylor

It was a good day when trustee Chuck Hotchkiss introduced Keets Taylor to Historic Bethabara Park. 

Born in Alaska, Keets Farquhar Taylor, artist, historian, preservationist and business woman, was raised in Flat Rock, NC where her father founded the Flat Rock Playhouse.

In 1992 Keets and her husband, Dick Taylor, helped organize the Loch Norman Highland Games. She later helped develop the Master Plan for the preservation of Rural Hill, the 1760 homestead of Major John Davidson in Huntersville, NC. and in 2004 was appointed the Executive Director of the Catawba Valley Scottish Society and the Rural Hill Center of Scottish Heritage.

Keets Taylor is an artist and portrait painter and is a member of the American Society of Portrait Artists.

Keets played an important role at Historic Bethabara Park in 2009. Bringing her artistic and organizational skills to bear at the 2009 Celtic Festival, she designed the festival brochure and worked to secure clan participation. She designed advertising and promotional material for Park events and researched and composed historic overviews of the terrain covered in two new Park trail maps. Smart, talented and humorous, Keets has been a delight to work with and an amazing volunteer.

Bethabara´s Volunteer of the Year 2007

A man of prodigious energy and talent, Chuck Hotchkiss has generously given of himself to support events at Historic Bethabara Park. Chuck is an important member of the Bethabara team, and his assistance enables Park staff to accomplish significant projects on a limited budget. Chuck is the volunteer every non-profit institution hopes to secure, and he is much appreciated by staff.

Chuck Hotchkiss has served as a volunteer at Historic Bethabara Park for the past 10 years. It is difficult to assess the actual number of hours he devotes to the Park, for he does woodwork, restoration, and repair for us every week, but in addition, he works all year long to set up the Park's highly successful Celtic Music Festival & Highland Games. Chuck has been the volunteer Director of this event for 10 years, sending out mailings, contacting Scottish clans throughout the state, securing athletes for the Highland Games and orchestrating Celtic food and craft vendors and activities. On the week of the Festival itself Chuck spends each day overseeing the set up and placement of tents and equipment. His contribution to the Park is invaluable, and the Celtic Festival would not be possible without his input and oversight.

Chuck has set up a woodworking shop in a Park building, the Archeology Lab, in order that the Park can build things needed on site at minimal expense.  He constructed signs for two historic houses at Bethabara , he restored, virtually single handedly, the interior of the 1803 Herman Buttner Distiller's House, he painted the interior of the 1782 Potter's House, he built cabinets for the entrance to the Edwin Stockton Sr. Visitor Center, he restored a museum display case for Bethabara's Colonial Medicine exhibit, he built information stands for the displays in our Barn exhibit, he built shelves for storage of education program equipment and business office records and rebuilt a cabinet for the museum store. He regularly repairs objects used by 4th grade students in the Park's "Making a Home in the Wilderness" program and he has constructed benches for the public to utilize throughtout the Park.

If ever a volunteer deserved recognition for his contribution to a non-profit community resource, it is Chuck Hotchkiss.

Bethabara Thanks Volunteer Photographer

Many of the photographs you see in our ads and on our website are due to the skill of long-time volunteer Jack Streb, APSA*. From September through May, visitors to the Park might see Jack strolling the grounds with his trusty film camera, capturing scenic shots when the light is just right or catching special moments during the Park's festivals and events. We are most fortunate that Jack donates his professional talent, honed throughout his career.

Jack served as Director of Still Photography Planning for Kodak's Consumer Markets Division and retired after serving as Vice President and General Manager of Marketing for Kodak's Electronic Photography Division. He has written articles on scores of photographic subjects and taught photography to such diverse groups as airline flight attendants, National Park Rangers, magazine writers, and adult camera clubs. He presented his slide and movie programs to more than 100,000 people in personal appearances in the United States and Canada.

We appreciate the many hours and rolls of film that Jack has spent to preserve unique aspects of the Park.

* Associate, Photographic Society of America