We the People (of JMM)
Performance Counts: July 2017
Every month in our “Performance Counts” newsletter we feature the facts and numbers behind what we do. But, of course, its not facts and numbers that underlie our success – it’s people: the board, staff and volunteers who give their passion, talents and energy to make JMM a vital part of this community. In the next ten days we will honor and welcome participants in all three groups!
On July 16 we will honor our volunteers for more than 7500 total hours of service by 69 individuals. This year our volunteers were docents on over 350 synagogue tours, spent countless hours greeting visitors at the front desk and judged 93 projects for the My Family Story competition. In Collections, volunteers scanned and uploaded more than 7,000 photos from the Baltimore Jewish Times, made folder lists for more than 4,000 folders in JMM’s institutional archives, and processed two major new archival accessions, cataloguing them and creating finding aids.
Volunteers were also crucial in our success in working with survivor families on the 91 collages created for the Remembering Auschwitz exhibit. Well beyond the numbers, volunteers opened their hearts to the painful recollections of these family members.
We are honoring the volunteers with a reprise of the Henrietta Szold living history performance we created last fall.
At the July 18 Board Meeting we will welcome six new Board members (also volunteers): Alan Dorenfeld, Shelley Goldseker, Lola Hahn, Bonnie Heneson, Skip Klein and Abe Kronsberg.
Robert Keehn is being promoted to Senior Vice President and Len Weinberg is now a one of our three Vice Presidents.All of our other officers – Duke Zimmerman, Toby Gordon, Saralynn Glass, Bruce Hoffberger and Arnold Fruman will continue to serve this fiscal year.
Jeff Katz, Lee Rosenberg, Jeffrey Scherr, Rikki Spector and Claire Tesh will begin fresh three year terms.
The Nominating Committee, led by Dr. Ira Papel, has once more done an outstanding job of strengthening our Board by recruiting candidates who bring a diversity of skills and experience to the JMM including marketing, real estate development, fundraising and community relations.
We also thank our two retiring Board members: Wendy Jachman who played a pivotal role in growing our fundraising capacity as co-chair of our development committee and who helped us forge partnerships with organizations such as Baltimore Center Stage. Crystal Watkins Johannson served six years on our board. She was a member of our marketing committee and helped JMM reach out to both young adults and members of the medical community.
On July 24 the newest member of the JMM staff will officially become part of our team. Lorie Rombro will take on the job of Archivist, working with Collections Manager, Joanna Church, to serve the needs of researchers, authors and exhibit developers. She will be a critical member of our team in “mining” the hundreds of boxes of documents in our holdings for insights that our useful to our core exhibit on Jewish Maryland and The Associated’s upcoming centennial.Lorie has worked with collections and archives at the National Trust for Historic Preservation and two of its affiliate historic sites – Woodlawn Plantation in Virginia and Villa Finale in Texas. She has a BA from Dickinson College and a Master of Arts in Museum Studies from George Washington University. She has deep family roots in Baltimore. Her great-grandfather was Rabbi Avraham Schwartz of Shomrei Mishmeres (Lloyd Street Synagogue).