My Norwegian heritage comes through my mother and her mother. My grandmother was 100% Norwegian. My brother, Lowell Smith, has been involved in Vesterheim for a long time. He made a donation, long ago, to purchase a brick put in ‘in memory’ of our mother, Blythe Smith. Even though he didn’t live in Iowa at the time, he was a very firm believer of Vesterheim.

My brother was my inspiration. I was living in Waterloo, working as the departmental director at the University of Northern Iowa, and, though I moved from Iowa in 2001, I kept up my membership because it’s very important. I became a Sustaining Fellow in 2012 because I am very interested in history and I’m very interested in Vesterheim being successful. I know these are hard times for all types of organizations and I just thought I needed to step forward. I think that Vesterheim has an established national presence and I think it’s important to keep that up.

The education for adults. I really like the Vesterheim journal that comes out quarterly. That’s a tremendous production.

If it’s at all feasible for you to make a gift at that level to very seriously consider it and arrange it. I know there will be a lot of organizations making requests of them, but Vesterheim is very unique and it’s important for us to support the work there.

I think Vesterheim is extremely important—not only to Iowa, not only for Norwegians, but as a national organization. It’s probably a world-class museum in ethnic studies.