“I’ve been involved with that museum since I was 10 years old,” Van Harlingen said. “”I can go back as a volunteer and do projects I’ve always wanted to.”
Bill Duning, a longtime society supporter, credited Van Harlingen with urging the board to try new things to boost new membership and build partnerships.
“She is a natural-born leader never in doubt about anything,” Duning said. “Vicky knows the history of the historical society better than anyone.”
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Most recently Van Harlingen oversaw the facilities and programs underlying the society, formed in 1940, for 12 years. She also was director from 1980-1985.
Her last day was March 28.
Through May 1, the Harmon Museum, Glendower Mansion and the Lebanon Conference and Banquet Center are closed as part of efforts to limit exposure to and spread of the novel coronavirus.
While out of the daily grind, Van Harlingen said she would continue working to bring to downtown Lebanon the Beedle House, the last building still standing from the first pioneer settlement of Warren County, established in the final years of the 1700s.
She won’t miss other administrative duties that come with the job.
“No more calls in the middle of the night because the alarm’s going off at Glendower,” she said with a laugh.
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Van Harlingen groomed her successor, Michael Coyan, a Lebanon native who was already the curator of the museum’s little-known art collection.
“I hired him with the idea I would hang on as long as I could,” she said.
Coyan said Van Harlingen talked to him about her need to retire to concentrate on caring for her mother, Patricia Van Harlingen, who is suffering from dementia.
“Her life was changing. She had responsibilities at home,” Coyan said.
Coyan said he began volunteering at 8 at the request of Mary Lincoln, the last great niece of Abraham Lincoln, who lived across from him in Lebanon, a city older than Ohio.
He promised efforts to attract new members and strengthen partnerships with historians from Franklin to Morrow to Springboro to Waynesville.
“We want to reconnect the museum all over the county and to the community again,” Coyan said. “We are the steward’s of Warren County’s history.”
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