As co-curator of the Homer History exhibit, “Making Ourselves At Home: Creating a Community on the Benchlands of Kachemak Bay,” I am extremely happy to let the community know that it still exists and is now on permanent display at the Homer Senior Center.

This exhibit first opened at the Pratt Museum in February of 2006 and remained on display there for several months, first in the main gallery on the first floor and then in somewhat reduced form in the lower level. After its closure, the City of Homer allowed its organizers to remount it at the Homer Airport, opposite the ERA counters. There it stayed until last year, providing a link to Homer’s past for newcomers, visitors and area residents as they passed through. 

Last year, the city advised organizers that the space would be needed for airport business, so the exhibit was dismantled and boxed up for storage.

This year, the exhibit’s inspiring force, Beth Cumming, asked if the Senior Center would be interested in hosting the exhibit. The answer was a resounding yes. For the past two weeks, center employees have been working to prepare the space, the exhibit display, and mount the display along the walls of the main corridor. It opened to the public on Monday. 

I especially want to thank Beth for pursuing this, HSC executive director Keren Kelley for approving it, her assistant Paula Frisinger — whose creative ideas and hard work were critical in bringing this exhibit together again — activities director Daniel Weisser for his enthusiastic support of this exhibit, and building supervisor Doug Pruett who pulled it all together and put it up on the wall in such a beautiful manner.

A highlight of the newly remounted exhibit is the space left for seniors to add their own photos to help rekindle the memories of other Homer area residents. We’re looking forward to seeing their additions make this display a real community exhibit.

The exhibit is open to the public, senior citizens or not.Thank you all.

Jan O’Meara, co-curator