After getting positive responses from a handful of scholars,
I scheduled phone conversations to chat with each of them at greater length the
following week. That Monday I had four phone calls lined up. After my first
conversation, the other three went very smoothly, without any hiccups. I had
perfected my sales pitch and had a rhythm and ready-made response for any of
their questions or reservations. The only one of any interest to this blog was
my first conversation – the one before I
perfected my talking points.
The conversation was with Dr. Clarence Mohr, the department
chair of the History Department at the University of South Alabama. Admittedly,
I was a little intimidated. Stammering along, I managed to make my pitch. At
first, he sounded unimpressed and uninterested. “What is the name of grant?” he
asked. Amazingly, shockingly, I couldn’t remember! I knew the essence of the
grant, I could say things like “it’s an NEH Planning Grant,” but I had forgotten
the full name (if I ever actually knew it anyway). I had gone outside into the park
opposite of the PHC’s entrance to make the phone call. I figured it would be a
nice, quiet spot to make a few phone calls, giving me an opportunity to stretch
my legs a little in the process. I brought the draft of the grant narrative,
should he ask specifics of the humanities themes we wanted him to interpret. I
brought his CV, should I need to reference something he had done in the past.
But I didn’t think to bring the application! And suddenly, I found myself far
away from my desk and serving up a jumbled collection of possible names. I’m
sure the first few minutes of our conversation inspired confidence in Dr. Mohr
regarding the project. How good our grant will be when the grant-writer can’t
even remember the name of the grant he’s been working on! Strike one. (Just to
set the record straight, it is the America’s Historical and Cultural
Organizations: Planning Grants with the National Endowment for the Humanities Division
of Public Programs).
Next came discussion of what types of stipends or
honorariums we were planning to pay our humanities consultants. The number Dr.
Beiler and I had discussed, and which was recommended to me by Laura Keim per
our earlier conversation on the matter, was $1,500 per scholar, not counting
travel, housing, and meals. And that’s what I told him. After I conveyed the
number we had in mind he informed me that he had done legal consulting in the
past, sometimes at $150 dollars per hour. So, in essence, our offer was peanuts
by comparison. Strike two. But that’s the humanities, there wasn’t much we
could do about the size of our stipends.
After a rough start, I rebounded. I dove into the tenets of
our plan and the uniqueness of our historic site. Mohr seemed interested by the
way we sought to use education as an interpretive theme with which to
contextualize other aspects of history. I told him that not many museums made
education central to their interpretations of American history. He agreed. The
first five minutes were rough, but the next twenty-five minutes of the
conversation went smoothly. His biggest concern after the initial reservations
was committing to a project that was still about a year away. As chair of his
department, he was reluctant to make a hard-and-fast commitment, not knowing
what else might come up before then. He asked me to contact the NEH and ask how
firm the “letters of commitment” had to be this early.
I contacted the NEH and, again, like the time before, they
answered promptly and were extremely helpful. The person I spoke to said that
the letters did not need to be very “committed” but instead just needed to
convey that 1.) the project was worthwhile and 2.) that they would be
interested in participating. That was all. I relayed the information to Dr.
Mohr and he agreed to be tentatively on board. And so the project team began to
take shape.
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