A Tribute to Roy Millegan

Editor's Note: The Whitehall Ledger received notice that former Whitehall resident Roy Millegan had passed last week. His obituary is forthcoming; Jefferson Valley Museum curator Arlene Weber was asked to comment on Roy's passing. Roy was a man known by many and his efforts affect all in Whitehall even if he was not known to them.

Everyone who has lived in our community has left their mark, some much more than others. Roy Millegan is one who left a very positive mark that will hopefully remain for generations to come. With his passing this month, it is appropriate to remember what his contributions have been over the decades since his family moved here in the later part of the 1950s.

Like many businesspeople in Whitehall in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, Roy was active in community organizations. But it was in the 1980s that Roy took an idea from a dream to a mission to preserve the valley's history and with the help of other dedicated friends, the drive to create a historical museum for Whitehall and the Jefferson Valley was begun. Except for his wife, Vera, few people realize the incredible accumulation of hours that Roy spent working toward the goal.

Acquiring a building that can be labeled a museum is only part of the journey. The building only has a name until it is filled with artifacts, documents, memories, and photos of great and seemingly small importance. Years before a building had been secured for the museum, Roy began accumulating the thousands of things that cumulatively would become the heart and soul of the structure. He spent many hours setting up interviews with local individuals and then talking with them for hours while his micro-cassette recorder preserved every word. As a backup to the recordings, Roy replayed those tapes and made transcriptions, all hand-typed.

His list of people he wanted to speak with was long and unfortunately, he was not able to interact with many before they passed away. But these oral histories were only a small part of what he knew was needed.

Because of Roy's persistence, the museum now has hundreds of genealogical cards on file, notes he made and typed on decades of weekly Whitehall newspaper articles, early photos from the valley, and photos he took of businesses in town to show how things had changed and will continue to change when looking back from the future. The total hours, days, and even the number of weeks needed to accomplish this over many years may never be known. We do know that without his service to the creation and maintenance of the museum and its thousands of artifacts and records, we would not be able to enjoy the wonderful facility that exists today.

Roy skillfully took hundreds of individual threads of local history and carefully wove them into a tapestry that chronicles life in the Jefferson Valley. Volunteers continue to weave in even more of these threads to enlarge and strengthen that tapestry to give present and future visitors a view of our history that without preservation would be forever lost.