In November 1961, sounding Raymond McLain’s note, Ralph McCallister commented to Earl Wallace that, as it was, the Pleasant Hill fund-raising effort did not seem likely to succeed: “the methods used on the operation fund and those on the beginning of the capital fund are not adequate to the size of the undertaking.” McCallister proposed the creation of a committee to study the question, and he also suggested further talks with a professional fund-raiser the group had previously consulted. Moving ahead, Wallace, who himself had no experience in philanthropic fund-raising, brought in representatives of a Pittsburgh firm, Ketchum, Inc., to survey the scene. In January, these observers produced a report that presented a mixture of question and promise.
The firm could create a successful program, said Ketchum, but the experts pointed to several aspects of the Shakertown project that would pose special problems for fund-raisers. In particular, the restoration of a village the size of Shakertown would be quite different from any restoration ever undertaken by a private group in the area—a colossal understatement—and therefore had no precedent or example of success to follow. In addition, the project had no constituency—no school, church, hospital, or other institution. Further, at this point nobody could say very clearly what was supposed to happen in Pleasant Hill beyond the opening of an inn and restaurant and the assembling of a small exhibition of Shaker items. However, said one of the Ketchum representatives, the project had enlisted a great many dedicated overall supporters and a number of others who had special interest in certain phases of it, such as its attraction to tourists or the importance of authentic preservation of the buildings. “He says,” Wallace reported to the trustees, that “we must elevate our own restrained view of not only the quality of this undertaking, but of its potential contribution to Kentucky.”
In learning that fund-raising for historic preservation differs from all other fund-raising efforts and requires a very special approach, Wallace and the Shakertown trustees were recapitulating the experience of the founders of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, who had originally imagined currents of preservationist contributions that in fact had never begun flowing. Clearly, any preservation project would most probably have only a nominal public constituency; the best sources of funds, as Wallace later observed, would be “individuals of strong financial capacity and with a particular interest in historic preservation.” But what John D. Rockefeller Jr. was likely to show up at Shakertown?
Overall, Wallace found his early fund-raising days a true learning experience. At the beginning, he said, “none of us were capable of a creditable judgment as to the cost of the project or as to the prospect of raising adequate funds” to carry it out. Despite everything that committee members had heard about previous efforts that had failed because of the size of the task, “we continued to intoxicate ourselves with the idea that people ‘out yonder’ with bountiful funds had only to be approached” to be won over to this unique endeavor. “I had never been on the nonprofit side of the street before,” he said. “I had always been working for money, and here these people were going to give it away.” But his crystal ball proved to be cloudy, indeed: “How we could have been so naive about being able to raise ‘big money’ so easily as we were thinking, I will never understand.” He summed up his reflections: “No one who had headed such a major project could have been as naive as I in thinking that people and foundations are loose with their money for historic preservation.”
How did matters work out with Ketchum and its experts? Despite some favorable elements in their appraisal of the situation, noted Wallace, they were badly mistaken in their judgment of the likelihood that Lexington business leaders would rush to support activities in a village as far away from the city as Pleasant Hill. Wallace also commented that Lexington was still tearing down historic buildings “to make way for commercial and industrial expansion through urban renewal.”
In any case, the executive committee, in a January 30, 1962, meeting—at which the members elected Wallace chairman and Charles Sturgill, a leading Lexington car dealer, vice chairman—discussed and approved arrangements with the fund-raisers. (In accepting this post, Wallace essentially took on the role of chief executive officer of Pleasant Hill, in effect becoming the long-sought “acceptable” person “who might take” the job of running the show.) In the following weeks Ketchum staff members, working with Ralph McCallister, conducted an intensive campaign in Lexington. But, new to this game, Wallace realized as time went on that “no fund raiser representative ever talked with any prospective donor, or intended to, and we were too inexperienced in such circles to have known that fund raisers make no contacts themselves but only direct the work of others in the project from a background position.” The result was that after paying the fund-raisers’ fee and expenses, Shakertown realized only a few thousand dollars and a few pledges, “some of which,” Wallace said mournfully, “were not honored.”
An immediate need for cash arose when the expiration date approached for the option on the Trustees’ House (the inn); the modern-day trustees had to come up with an immediate payment of $62,500, which they did not have. Barry Bingham came forth with a challenge offer of $25,000 if the other trustees would raise the rest of the money. “The seriousness of our undertaking dawned on me and five other trustees,” Wallace said, “when we had to endorse Shakertown’s note at a Lexington bank to get the balance.” The transaction was made with LeRoy Miles of the First Security Bank, and since Dorothy Clay had signed first, Miles gravely warned her that, in case of default, she would be responsible for repaying the entire sum; that seems to have been the most humorous moment of the day. One member of the group commented that Shakertown would own one piece of property if it never had another. (In August, Pleasant Hill certainly looked unlikely ever to own anything else at all—Hilary Boone, the treasurer, reported that the organization had only a hundred dollars in the bank, “with many bills outstanding.”)
As the year advanced and the fund-raising teams scoured Lexington for money, Wallace tried another traditional path to funding. Looking for a major gift that could get the actual restoration on its feet, he began corresponding with a number of leading foundations and, always at his own expense, undertook trips to New York, Washington, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Toledo, Chicago, Minneapolis, Akron, Canton, Wilmington, Cincinnati, Dayton, Atlanta, Houston, Battle Creek, Pittsburgh, and, closer to home, Louisville. Nobody, he reported, even went so far as to encourage him to file a formal application for a grant—even a small one—and nobody showed any confidence in Pleasant Hill’s chances for success. If at least some of the restoration had already taken place, and the project thereby had some achievement to point to, perhaps money would have been a bit easier to attract. But, as it was, almost nobody in Wallace’s travels had even asked him for more information about Pleasant Hill or the people involved in it. “I traveled about fifty thousand miles on airplanes to see rich people,” he said, “and came back with maybe eight thousand dollars.”
(Wallace stayed on the trail of outside donors, however, and in future years he would enjoy remarkable success with men and women he came to know personally, but his earlier efforts with heads of corporations brought a stack of refusals that illustrated the variety of tones the art of the kiss-off can achieve. Beginning with the basic, sweeping turndown, sometimes written by a public relations aide—“Mr. X asked me to explain that his many widespread commitments made it impossible for him to consider a personal contribution,” they moved to the simple personal rejection by the tycoon himself—“While I believe your project has considerable merit, I am already overcommitted in my personal contributions this year”—to the apologetic no from the assistant—“Regrettably, the giving budget which Mr. and Mrs. X maintain is completely filled, and they will not be able to meet the request you have made of them”—to the lofty “It has been my practice for quite a few years to contribute 30% of my gross income to charity. . . . In reviewing my program I do not contemplate any changes for next year.” Some begged off with deep feeling—“At present I am overwhelmed with requests from philanthropic institutions dealing with the immediate problem of the ill and injured” or “I really must ask to be excused from contributing”—while others settled for uncomplicated terseness—“I regret I will be unable to support the project to restore the Historic Village of Shakertown.” The masterpiece came from an executive (and personal acquaintance) who simply returned the solicitation letter with the handwritten notation: “Earl—Sorry, I have no interest in this.” Telling one executive about the array of cultural programs Pleasant Hill would present, Wallace gamely included a quote from Lewis Mumford: “A community whose life is not irrigated by art . . . is a community that exists half alive.”)
As 1962 wound down, with the fund-raising executives departed and the foundations having offered neither money nor hope, Wallace found himself in something of a spot. Shakertown had made no progress in raising the money needed to begin the restoration of the Trustees’ House, the only building the organization actually owned, much less in finding the funds needed to pay for the other four pieces of village property on which it held installment contracts. His Pleasant Hill colleagues had made him chairman in good part because of his general association with money, but he had presented no magic formula for funding historic preservation activities. “It was obvious that the trustees were looking to me to find enough money to begin the restoration,” he noted—and this meant big money. “As chief executive I had accepted all corporate responsibilities, and my reputation and judgment were inseparably linked with the fate of the project.” And, not a man to make such a statement lightly, he added, “The ultimate success of Shakertown therefore became priority number one in my affairs.”
As a writer would observe some years later, “The market alone is ill-suited to protecting historically important objects and should not be entrusted with the task.” But if not the market, and not foundations, and not individual Medicis and Rockefellers, and not even, it seemed, the government, then who? And how?
The seriousness of all the financial problems did not keep the Pleasant Hill team from continuing its program of activities to draw in the general public. In May 1962, Juliette Brewer and Lucy Graves, as “cochairmen” (this was, indeed, 1962), had announced that the second annual Shakertown festival would be held September 20 through 23 (the dates were later advanced a week). In September further announcements whetted public interest in what now bore the name Pleasant Hill Autumn Festival: Governor Combs and Barry Bingham would speak; various exhibitors would show old copper, pewter, and china items, English silver, miniature furniture, and antique toys; period flower arrangements would delight visitors’ eyes; and pupils from the Shakertown elementary school would appear in Shaker dress. Lucy Graves took as her own special assignment the creation of flower arrangements, which she made from wildflowers she collected along the country roads. This time, when the festival opened, it was Mrs. Brewer who removed the floral rope from the doors of the Centre Family House, with the aid of a special collaborator—Mrs. J. W. Mitchell of Danville, granddaughter of Sister Mary Settles, the schoolteacher whose death in 1923 had marked the end of the Shakers at Pleasant Hill.
Something else had changed from the opening ceremony of the previous year’s festival. Now presiding was a new executive director of Pleasant Hill; the appointment of James Lowry Cogar, the former curator at Colonial Williamsburg, had been announced on June 16. After less than eleven months on the job, Ralph McCallister had gone. He had worked hard in a difficult situation—planning, speaking, writing, attending meetings of all kinds throughout Central Kentucky, and supervising the various events at Pleasant Hill, with many of these activities focused on fund-raising—but he and Pleasant Hill had not made a happy couple.
Rumbles of discontent on both sides of the situation—the executive director and the board—had led to a meeting on the afternoon of May 20, when McCallister came to see Earl Wallace to complain, first, that his position had become untenable because, while he held the responsibility for several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of property, the various committees of the board had taken away his authority to administer the property, and second, that he had likewise lost the authority to administer the programs that used that property. He wanted the board either to reinstate his authority or to buy out his contract—to pay him the full balance for the remaining twenty-four months of the agreement.
Wallace was having none of this. All authority stemmed from the executive committee, he believed, which had complete control of the activities of the executive director; Wallace himself certainly had not become chairman of the executive committee in order to hand control of matters over to somebody else, whatever his title. The basic problem, Wallace noted, concerned the director’s view of the role of volunteers in a project like Pleasant Hill; the problem became especially acute, Wallace commented, when “volunteers feel a superior confidence in their ability, and conversely a lack of confidence in administrative performance.” The discussion in a subsequent meeting of the executive committee made plain the “existence of a great deal of friction” between McCallister and some of the committee chairmen and other board members. The director, they said, wanted to do everything himself, leaving them with little if any responsibility for executing the various projects—when, in fact, volunteers made up a vital part of the entire operation. (In saying this, the members were, from the opposite point of view, reflecting McCallister’s theory of management). Some felt that the director had sometimes used poor judgment in carrying out his duties, and, worse perhaps, had “talked indiscreetly and in damaging terms about certain board members to people outside the project.” “He was certainly very decided in his opinions,” said Betty Morris, who, for one, got along well with him, and the fact of the matter was that “the women just didn’t like him.”
Overall, the members of the executive committee saw the deterioration of the relationship between McCallister and the board as so serious that his presence was “hampering the whole effort of Shakertown, Inc.” But how could matters improve when the director refused “to admit being at fault in any way”? One way or another, the relationship had effectively ended, and after negotiations a deal was struck buying out McCallister.
As for the chief executive officer, Wallace himself, he was a man of great charm and even courtliness and also of marked likes and dislikes; he had a pronounced way of taking to some persons and not to others, and all the evidence suggests that McCallister fell into the negative category. Obviously, Wallace was far from alone in holding this opinion, but in any case, whatever McCallister’s personal merits and deficiencies, with his particular résumé he was simply not the right person for Pleasant Hill in 1961 or 1962.
Guided by Raymond McLain’s insistence on the importance of moving immediately into programs aimed at improving society, the trustees in their search for a director had looked for somebody with an executive background (obviously an important consideration here) combined with experience in program content, and McCallister came from Chautauqua, perhaps the most famous fountainhead of American popular education and cultural uplift. But in doing so, the trustees ignored the fact that they were attempting to raise money to carry out a great work of historic preservation and restoration, and that they had to restore and create the setting before they could put on any but the most limited programs. When they chose McCallister, the trustees believed that they had found a director “completely in accord with the purposes of the project,” but in reality they had put the cart far in front of the horse. Any hope that a committee of McCallister’s disdained amateurs could guide the actual work of preservation was simply unrealistic, even if it should include architects and other professionals. Pleasant Hill, in short, needed a preservationist to guide the work, and it needed one full time.
While the trustees busied themselves with the McCallister flap, another personnel issue had arisen in their own ranks. In January, Retta Wright, one of the most prominent and active trustees—in Boone’s view the hardest worker of them all—had objected to Wallace’s moving to enlarge the board by “selecting” a number of Lexington businessmen for it; as chairman of the nominating committee, she observed with some acerbity that since no names had been submitted to the committee, she did not even know who these prospective members were. Her larger complaint turned on her objection to enlarging the board to make it a fund-raising group itself instead of creating fund-raising committees, and to filling it with Lexingtonians when “foundations and large donors would feel it was a more responsible board of trustees if it was widely representative of Kentucky and included some of the special friends we have mentioned outside the state.” Even if some of the new members should prove to be members of her own family, she said, she would feel compelled to vote against them. She also observed, pointedly, that “we have been ineffective for the past months and this will certainly be our last chance to save and use this village.”
It seems obvious that Mrs. Wright disapproved of Wallace’s executive style as well as of specific actions, and objected, as she saw it, to being ignored. Unfortunately, Raymond McLain was not on hand to soothe feelings with his spiritually oriented emollience, and the result was that Mrs. Wright resigned, as—sadly from the point of view of the origins of the project—did her sister, Lucy Graves; Dorothy Norton Clay succeeded Mrs. Wright as secretary of the board. (One person said that Wallace did not want to listen to the women on the board, yet that point seems highly questionable, since Dorothy Clay and such other stalwarts as Juliette Brewer stayed with him; later in the year, in fact, Mrs. Clay agreed to serve as administrative officer assisting the director. More likely, perhaps, was that Wallace, a fully committed and tenacious executive who “would not stop till finishing a project,” as one associate said, sometimes seemed to pay little heed to others, whether women or men. Mrs. Clay, who from time to time made generous contributions of IBM stock to the cause, seems to have had no particular policy differences with Wallace, but, according to Jim Thomas, her later resignation from the board came because she objected to the chairman’s “bowdlerization” of the minutes.)
Looking back at his earliest associations with Pleasant Hill, Jim Cogar remembered that when he was a small child his family would bring him on picnic excursions to nearby High Bridge. It was an all-day trip in the Model T there and back from Midway, in Woodford County, “usually consisting of five or six punctures on the way and stopping at every stream to fill the radiator.” Sometimes they would have Shakertown’s inn as their planned destination, but they would carry a large hamper of food in case the car couldn’t quite make it that far. When they clattered into the village on the rocky and rutted Lexington-Harrodsburg Pike, young Jim would see Sister Mary Settles seated on the porch of the biggest building, the Centre Family House. “I was told that when the last Shaker died, the world was going to end,” he recalled. “This disturbed me a great deal, because I was afraid that when Sister Mary died the whole universe was going to disappear. I spent a good deal of time praying for her survival.”
While a student at the University of Kentucky in the late 1920s, Cogar, who clearly had already chosen his destiny, spent much of his free time scouring the Blue Grass area for antiques. After graduating with a major in history, he went off to Harvard, where he acquired his master’s degree in 1929, and then to Yale for courses in architecture. In 1931 had come the opportunity to become curator at Colonial Williamsburg, where Cogar had remained to build up his fine national reputation for seventeen years, until resigning to join with partners in opening a firm dealing with the very subjects with which he had spent almost two decades—eighteenth-century furniture and furnishings. After his resignation he continued to serve as an adviser to Colonial Williamsburg, however, selecting furniture and furnishings in exhibition buildings and counseling on furnishings, paint color, and other questions in other buildings. During the ensuing years he served as furniture adviser to the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and as a consultant to a variety of preservation-related institutions and activities, including the Octagon, the headquarters of the AIA in Washington, the National Park Service, and a number of historic houses; he also supervised the furnishing of the Florida governor’s new mansion in Tallahassee.
Although he had lived away from Kentucky since graduating from college, Cogar had one brush with Shakertown some eleven or twelve years later, when Burwell Marshall, the Louisville lawyer who owned part of the village and always hoped to restore it, asked whether he would consider taking on the job. Cogar turned him down, and, as described earlier, Marshall made no progress in his endeavor. In 1957 Cogar came to Lexington to take part in the Blue Grass Preservation Short Course along with the other preservationist luminaries. Then the death of one of his Williamsburg partners meant that his business would have to undergo changes, and the serious illness of his mother brought him back to Central Kentucky in 1962, perhaps only temporarily. But these events, though sad in themselves, represented a remarkable and perhaps even make-or-break stroke of luck for Pleasant Hill—especially combined, as they were, with Cogar’s lifelong interest in the village. With such a star actually in the neighborhood—a man with many friends in the area, notably including Dorothy Clay—it was clearly inevitable that Earl Wallace would rush to capture him for the directorship of the project—“I must say,” noted Wallace, “at a modest salary.” The job also had, as one of its most marked characteristics, a highly uncertain future. But fortune smiled on Pleasant Hill that day. “We are fortunate,” Wallace said in announcing the news, “to have Mr. Cogar’s experience and knowledge available to us.” Indeed, obtaining the services of Jim Cogar represented a notable coup for Earl Wallace and Shakertown: in this handsome gentleman with his mellow, blended Kentucky-Virginia accent, the project had acquired, along with a great measure of credibility, its theme-setter and its tastemaker.
The new executive director and the Pleasant Hill board agreed on the task to be performed, and it was enormous: to restore the village to its appearance during its most flourishing years, the period from about 1835 to 1840. On the more immediate practical level, Cogar had to engage in “minor restorations and preserving what was here.” Essentially, this effort would be a maintenance operation, carried out with the help of two local Mercer County craftsmen, Jackie Sanford, a painter, and Buford Parsons, a carpenter, and Sterling Linton, a groundskeeper; Cogar and Earl Wallace and Betty Morris would come over from Lexington to help out in various ways as often as their other duties permitted. “That was the beginning,” Cogar said, and it was “very slow.”
Looking toward the day when Pleasant Hill would be operating the inn in the Trustees’ Office, Cogar got in touch with a couple who had a national reputation in the field; they could visit Pleasant Hill as consultants, he thought, and might even agree to manage the facility themselves. These friends, however, seemed to see little point at this time in becoming involved with Pleasant Hill, expressing their doubts “as to our financial position in following through with them,” but they would be interested “when we had sufficient funds.” Discussing this response, the board members agreed that they must “proceed with a very simple and modest beginning.”
Cogar held the portfolio at Pleasant Hill of aesthetic chief; he made no claim to be a fund-raiser and had never engaged in such work. Even so, he proved to be an important individual contributor, proposing in late 1962 to forgo $3,000 of the $6,000 he was due as salary for his six months of service during the year and to have it credited to him as partial fulfillment of a donor pledge. He then suggested that the remaining $3,000 be used to buy a car that would be for his exclusive use but that would belong to Shakertown; since Charles Sturgill could make a Tempest station wagon available at cost—$2,500—the balance could go toward the director’s travel expenses (it later turned out that the car would cost $3,100). The board members enthusiastically accepted Cogar’s generous offer, and they also said, accurately enough, that “his continued association with Shakertown was of utmost importance, and it was agreed that terms for the future must be worked out immediately to keep him on as the Director.”
Unlike the situation at Williamsburg, Cogar had to pursue his aim of creating a cameo of a previous century in the Blue Grass without the backing of a single-minded patron like John D. Rockefeller Jr. Thus things would remain “slow” at Pleasant Hill, and no significant preservation efforts could take place, until Earl Wallace managed to produce a counterpart of one kind or another for Williamsburg’s billionaire godfather.