I I
S T
О
R Y
In its long history,
the New Bern
Academy has seen
life as a school,
a hospital , and
a museum.
Back in Business
THE NEW BERN ACADEMY FINDS NEW LIFE THANKS TO A DEDICATED CROUP OF VOLUNTEERS
Memorial Elementary School
; Assistant Principal David Webb). New
Bern Mayor Tom A. Bayliss ill, who
spent four of his own elementary
school years as a pupil at the
Academy, helped cut the ribbon —
and reminisced about his personal ties
to the building.
“My family on both sides going back
five generations attended school here,”
Bayliss told the opening-day crowd. “I
really appreciate the folks who have
moved here and helped us preserve
these architectural treasures."
♦
The effort to reopen the Academy
Museum got rolling on Feb. .3,
after its doors had been locked for
nearly a year, when Tryon Palace
Volunteer Coordinator Fran Campbell
organized a community meeting to see
whether enough citizens in the com¬
munity might be ready, willing, and
able to make the personal commit¬
ment of their time to permit the
reopening of the museum with an all¬
volunteer staff. Since the state budget
crises that had forced the museum to
close in March 2002 was still a prob¬
lem, the volunteer staff w-as Tryon
Palace’s only viable option for bringing
the museum back on line.
John K. Muth, a recent retiree who
had arrived in New Bern only last July
from New York State, was one of the
citizens who attended that first meet¬
ing in February and, apparently, fell for
Campbell's powers of persuasion.
Today he serves as chairman of the
New Bern Academy Volunteer
Committee.
By Carl Herko
The old New Bern Academy
building sure has seen a lot of
rebirths in its long history, from
the time it was built in 1809 to replace
an earlier school that had burned, to
the time it became a military hospital
during the Civil War, to the period
almost a century in length, from 1881
to 1971, when it was part ot New
Bern’s public school system. But none
of those rebirths could have been more
welcome than the one that took place
on May 3, 2003, when the New Bern
Academy Museum reopened to the
public after being shuttered for more
than a year because ol budget cuts.
Its reopening on that warm spring
Saturday gave the public a chance to
once again enjoy and learn from its
fine exhibits on New Bern’s earliest
history, the city's role in the civil war,
early education and architectural his-
Summer 2005
tory. But it also signaled a significant
step forward for Tryon Palace Historic
Sires & Gardens, which operates the
Academy Museum: For the first time
in its long history, a significant part of
the Palace museum complex was being
run entirely by volunteers.
The ribbon-cutting ceremony to
reopen the museum was a gala affair,
complete with a rifle salute by a com¬
pany of Civil War re-enactors who had
encamped on the Academy Green for
the day and the re-appearance of a
special guest from the pages of history:
Alonzo Attmore, the Academy's first
head master {portrayed by Brinson
Calling All Alumni
The volunteers who run the New Bern Academy Museum want to
hear from alumni - both teachers and students - from the years
when the Academy operated as a school until 1971. Their hope is to be
able to organize a reunion of former pupils and teachers sometime in
the fall of 2003. Alumni interested in hearing more about the reunion
or becoming involved in its planning should contact the Academy by
phone at (252) 514-4951 or by email at info@tryonpalace.org.
