Breathing New Life into the Past
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Discovery treasures from MSA’s storied past on the fourth floor.
Written by Alyssa Moyers, student-contributor
Long disused, the attic of the math building shelters uncounted fragments of history. Rows of beakers rest beneath quilts of dust, and stacks of yellowing books lean like miniature towers of Pisa. A piece of land surveying equipment reflects what ambient light it can catch from beneath the dust and rust, drawing the eye of the people who have just entered the attic. Its iron frame supports a flat, circular piece of metal marked evenly like a curved ruler. A small level is set just below it, and as the equipment is picked up, the bubble in it slides from end to end. That it has not leaked or broken in all these years is something of a miracle.
Mold, sun damage, and damp conditions threaten countless other artifacts and records stowed in attics and basements around Miller’s sprawling campus. Collections of old photographs, blueprints, and more were stored in a room under the kitchens, perilously close to a leak. Framed images and other papers were found in the attic beneath a hole in the ceiling, almost in the path of the water dripping from it. Everything has been moved out of this basement room and onto the fourth floor, where it will be somewhat safer, but it isn’t a permanent solution. “I’m not sure that it is in a safe place yet,” says Rachel Padget, Development Coordinator, who is spearheading the project to rescue the archive.
This isn’t Ms. Padget’s first time tackling a difficult organization project. While teaching at Future Public School in Boise, Idaho, she organized the school's K-6 library, ensuring that students of every age could find the books they wanted. At the same time, she entered a library program at the USC Marshall School of Business, where she discovered her passion for archival work.
Drawn to the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, she began looking into schools in the area for her kids, Evan and Anderson. “I found Miller, and it was like a mountain bike farm school for my daughter, which is her dream school, and Seven Rivers was on campus too, and then I fell in love with Miller,” she said. She noticed the job opening in the development office, and everything fell into place. “When I thought of us all rolling up to this campus and pouring out of our car and the experiences we could have here, I was like, ‘No, I want Miller for me too. Evan can’t be the only one.’ Anderson, me, we’re all here. We’re all in.”
The archival project has already begun, and Ms. Padget has opened up opportunities to students who want to dive in and make a difference. A small group of students gave a presentation to the Alumni Association to request funding for supplies, and two thousand dollars went towards the archive project thanks to their generosity.
Archives are integral to institutional memory. With the approach of the sesquicentennial, Miller’s 150th anniversary, it’s more important than ever that we have access to the school’s rich history. “One thing that I believe strongly in is that if we don't create an archive now, we're never going to prioritize it,” says Ms. Padget. The sesquicentennial provides both a deadline and a strong motivation that will be vital to the success of the project.
In anticipation of Historic Garden Week, in which Miller was featured as a tour location, Ms. Padget and a few others ventured into the dusty attic of the Math Building in search of artifacts to display. Though rust-spotted and soft with a film of dust, the old piece of surveying equipment they found is a beautiful example of what we are preserving. Not many alumni are old enough to remember it, but once it would have been shiny and new, kept free of dust by the hands that carried it, that knew its use. There are many artifacts and even more numerous photographs and records that carry a connection to alumni, and the archive will return them to relevance. Ms. Padget says, “You can show them. You can reacquaint them with those memories and remind them what Miller meant to them, and there's real power in that.”
