Mary Leblanc and Susan Madison

Recorded September 19, 2014 Archived September 19, 2014 38:57 minutes
0:00 / 0:00
Id: ddb001663

Description

Volunteers and friends, Mary Leblanc (65) and Susan Madison (77) talk about their experience volunteering for the Sam Noble Museum.

Subject Log / Time Code

M remembers working for the old Museum. M worked as a fossil preparator. M signed up in 1994 and worked in a gym. She opened the plastered jackets the paleontologists used to store their findings. S remembers volunteering for the Brown Gallery at the Museum.
M and S describe the different tools they use to uncover the fossils. M and S enjoy socializing with the other volunteers.
M talks about the head of the tyrannosaurus found in a prison in Ok. M and S remember some of the memorable projects they have worked on.
M remembers building the juvenile apatosaurus. They used 3D printers to replicate the bones for display; it took 2 years.
M and S talk about being well versed in fossil display. Working in the lab has helped M become a better docent.
M describes the formal training all docents and volunteers go through.
M and S talk the digs have been in. M and S helped prepare the jackets.
S and M talk about their relationship with each other.

Participants

  • Mary Leblanc
  • Susan Madison

Recording Locations

Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History

Venue / Recording Kit

Partnership Type

Fee for Service

Transcript

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00:06 I'm Mary LeBlanc. I just turned 65 today is September 19th 2014. We are in the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History and I work in the vert paleo lab with a su medicine.

00:28 I am sooo Madison, and I am older than dirt. I am I am 76 years old and today is September 19th 2014 and we are in the Sam Noble Museum and I am here with my friend my vert paleo friend Mary.

00:51 Now Mary you were working here before I got here. That's right. Actually a started working here before here was here. I started working at the museum at the old Museum a little small one on campus before they built this brand new beautiful Museum. I saw an ad in the paper that said

01:18 Fossil preparation and I thought that sounded fascinating and it met at night, which was perfect because I work during the day also, my college degree was in history with a minor in anthropology and art history and I always wanted to do something with a museum Hands-On. I was at the time working at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of art the art museum on campus but I was secretary. So all I got to do was invoices payroll I travel claims and I could see the exhibits but I didn't get to actually do any Hands-On stuff. So I signed up in 1994 and we met in a wooden Barracks gym, no air conditioning in the summer. We were shorts and t-shirts and we learned how

02:18 To open the plaster jackets that the paleontologist had dug up in the field and brought back to campus and a lot of the ones we were working on had been collected by dr. Stovall in the 1930s and 40s. They had just been stored all over campus because there wasn't room for him in the museum and I think at the time than you live about to build this Museum, so they were trying to kind of get the collection together and open what they had and see what they had.

02:56 I can remember the campaign to build a museum and

03:05 When it opened I was still working with my husband and trying to think of something else to do that would be kind of fun and interesting and so I started volunteering upstairs in the brown gallery and I was there for I don't know 6 months is 8 months something like that and but I kind of got bored cuz all you did was just stand around and make sure the people didn't do something like touch up pictures and kids didn't run around and I would make up stories about the pictures and then when kids would come in and we'll take off what happened before this picture. And then what do you think would happen after this picture and try and get the kids to look at the paintings a little bit different but most of the time was kind of boring and so finally I saw a write-up in the paper and they were asking for volunteers and I really wanted to work behind the scenes building building the Des.

04:05 Please or whatever and so I don't remember exactly I remember to calling Bill May and going up and going upstairs and started working up there. This was before they had a formal training drive right now. Yeah, it's a lot of it was just kind of on-the-job training, right and I can just I can remember a lot of times. There was Kyle and Bill on me. I think I was the only one but kind of work that I enjoy doing all hands on hand using little tipsy Topsy tools to expose the fossil. What are we doing that tinnitus or when you first started that was before the turn on stairs, So I'll get that I liked about it and I still do is at the end of

05:05 Day, you can see what you've done bride. You can make see progress. It might not be very much like to see progress and I can remember learning how to do all all of the different tools that now it just it just kind of second a dinner and saws small vacuum dust behind. Our room is a what they call a quote clean room where they have microscopes. They don't want a lot of dust to go in there. And so whenever were working with dust making things then we have to use the vacuum to suck up the dust has as it has It Go as it's being made.

06:02 And usually with a cast cutter when we're opening plastered jackets because you it's like a it's actually a medical tool that they used to cut cast and a lot of the fossils are in plastered jackets away call plastered jackets that have to do in the field. They dig up what they think there might be something interesting underneath. They see little bit of Bones on the surface and I think there might be a whatever underneath and so then they it's all covered in plaster and then you dig underneath and turn it over and cover all that in class result of it's a plaster shell and so that's brought in so they really don't know what they meaning the the curators really don't know what we may be white, but we get to we have a fun task of actually opening up and removing the Matrix and exposing what is really there.

07:02 And that's that's kind of like a treasure hunt is that it is absolutely cuz sometimes we open up stuff that we think all this is really going to be wonderful and it's a bunch of junk. I think they really aren't any good for anything that I got to have this exciting stuff. If you find a tooth that's exciting dinosaur tooth and paleontologists can tell from a tooth exactly what what Critter it came from. So, I'm usually we have people that volunteer the volunteers come from all different.

07:37 Careers like we have a dentist that volunteer and usually they find the teeth that we use we use little dental tools little small tiny little pics and exacto knives and things like that and Dennis are used to use a note to also and they seem to like working on fossils. For some reason. I don't really understand exist. Can we we always kid with gym because it's kind of a continuation of his day job and but he enjoys it and it doesn't say it as much as social activity for us because all the different volunteers are very interesting we've had I remember Carolyn and Glenn were medical missionaries in Illinois World steps to call and so we got to talk to them about the play fast.

08:37 And then and then Sally Johnston and she her evocation is cooking and so she cooks and she bakes cookies and cakes and things and she brings him up, She cooks for competition and that we end of Stampy and so she she used to bring up stuff for us to try to see how she works during the day now so that I don't have any don't get any mail. We haven't had any for a while, but it was it's interesting to hear her talk and varied backgrounds of people that come and it's very interesting to talk to all these people. Yeah, you know Bill May was interesting fascinating to hear him talk how he he and his wife will take off and and wander all over looking for fossils and looking for dinosaurs and

09:32 Why don't we talk about the that tinana tinana sore that they found at mcloyd prison because the

09:44 The guard that train the blood house was an amateur paleontologist and prisoners would volunteer to run The Bloodhounds would track him and he filed a blood hounds and one day after heavy running. He found these bone sticking out and since it was a state prison and where the State Museum he called us out and we dug up a whole herd of Tanana stores, including the very first complete tinnitus or skull and is it was so exciting that when we were working on that jacket in the lab, they mounted a camera on the ceiling and it took pictures every so many seconds and I called it that tune on Oakham and you could get you could log on to the website and you would look for Tenino Cam and you could watch us actually Excavating the tinnitus or 10.

10:44 I was wrong. It was huge and said they would just open a little bit of it at a time and we would all be working around and now you get to working after filing you get to feeling a little goofy say things and do things that we knew would be on the town of camp, but we always had to make sure that we were dressed halfway. Sometimes. I told my sister-in-law. Okay, look on the time. It's not a cam at a certain time and I made a little sign in and I said hello Diane and so are you stuck it up to the camera when but she forgot she didn't see it.

11:22 So that was very interesting that that was a really interesting fossil to work on. What about the turtle? Oh we went in when we came in one evening in this big huge Mound was in there. Oh gosh, what's up by two feet tall and 3 or 4 ft wide big the speaker grounded. And so what was underneath inside it was they thought was a turtle shell and the shell and part of the seed benefits in over and covered the whole thing because they're they're afraid it would fall apart. And so but anything that comes into the museum has to be decontaminated by bugs or Critters. We don't want them in the museum. And so I guess this Wednesday

12:22 Through the bubble what they call a guy ask Kyle. He said it was too big for the bubble. Okay, that's fine. Okay, so that's why because we would be working in one of the things that we use is acetone to soften the Matrix dirts and whatever it is. And so we would we would we would pour pour acetone on the area. We were working and it's gripe and then scrape the sand off and also needs a landscape coming up Tuesday. There's a full water water water and is it also has acetone locked up in there for right now all night. They're getting water on it but that we can't have bugs in the museum now, I'll say what other things that we work on them. Very interesting.

13:26 What the hell was that the turn on a sore tail that we worked on the all the all the end of the tendons in the apollo-soyuz tendons. They were just gorgeous the bone was there and then the fossilized tendons were running along then that's something out of it. That normally doesn't make it through the the uncovering process. And so they the traitor the paleontologist were really happy to see that and that was fun to him, He asked if it was almost architectural A Little Tenderness, it wouldn't help vertebrae. Oh, yeah it is and that was when Kathy was was I think working and there was a group of us. He Kyle called us the girls at The Golden Girls.

14:16 Do we were just talked about all kinds of things. I can remember when Kathy's dog died and we all commiserated with her on that and she's since moved on to Nashville, but we had a good time. But yeah, that was fun. That was too and that's that's kind of part of one of the reasons why.

14:37 I really would hate to leave coming in the evening. And because I made sure I've known Mary for over 10 years and I thought when I retired come in the daytime, so I wanted to come at night. But all the people I gotten close to still come at night because like Jim is still working during the day and night because we got our little group is this true we can talk about building the juvenile, Apatosaurus.

15:10 Yeah, that was we had three or four parts of three or four juvenile Apatosaurus at dr. Stovall head found in the thirties and forties, but when the museum open they didn't have the money to do the baby and they got a grant and to use the new 3D printer scanner that the engineering department on campus at coffee and we used it to scan the bones that we had and it could if you had a right femur, but no left it could reverse it and print it out in plastic and if we were missing bones, we could stop them and clay and then the the print the scanner with scan it and print it out. If you had a they had a small bone of that. They could then the scanner. Could you make me sick?

16:10 It's a little scary what they can do with that. She was fascinating but it we we got printed out a whole little juvenile Pabst or in plastic, but we did not know the how long that plastic wood last because it's a nipple with male. Yeah, if it was in a museum. Yeah, they wanted to make sure they would last forever and ever so we'll use her old tried-and-true making molds. We spent two years to my bones hundred.

16:45 Something about I don't know how to remove in God we had to make a mold of every single plastic bone and some of them the leg they would do it and have so for one leg you're doing 2 to moles. And so we had to I even might a little book because a manual because this took a lot of we had to why we had to we had to

17:12 Prepare the plastic by putting clay all around it and getting it ready for the silicone in to do the silicone. It took a lot of math and careful weighing and percentages. So, you know, I felt sorry for Kyle because he was trying to teach a bunch of people that didn't know anything about much of anything about this kind of stuff and he was incredibly patient man that saw what I did though. I I took notes and then I type them up and I brought him back and I had him correct him and then I took photographs of each step and so I made a manual so because it took us two years to do all this and people would come in and have to pick up wherever you were in the process. So we had a little manual that show us how to do it. So we might have silicone mold, but it's flexible. So then we had to do a plaster mother mold to hold the Silicon silicon mold so that it wouldn't get bent out of shape.

18:12 All done then we had to mix up the resin to pour into the more into the moment. He had to put it in the fume Hood because we were doing I like that. I don't know anyway, so it took us two years and do all every few months and then they were we were traitors or somebody said well as long as you're making one, why don't you make more so in case we were making eight copies of each and every bone and a couple of months we get a little rest of them piled say well, maybe we'll bring something down for you to do a course that never happened. We got tired of making molds. Where do I get back to where I know but when we go in the gallery there is this juvenile Apatosaurus that we helped build that is there in in the display in the display.

19:12 It's kind of a fun thing to like go to another Museum and you know, you can go up and you can look at the bones really really care of that white, right?

19:28 And a lot of people I also volunteer in the gallery as a docent and a lot of people that one question I always get is this real is this real now? Some of their huge ones are fiberglass because they're so big but we do have a giant fossil leg and a tow a dinosaur totally let them hold and then I showed them how they can look at it carefully see if it's real or not. Blackout pentaceratops is 75% real and it's all real fossil. But the metal is on the outside holding the fossil. So I thought you were going to look at how it's put together. Do you see metal? If you do probably is partly real fossil. You don't see any medal at all. It's probably a cat if it was all working in the lab really helps me being a docent in the gallery cuz I know how that stuff made and put together and I have work on some of the dinosaurs that are in the gallery.

20:28 And I have pictures I have taken in the lab that I keep in my pocket and I can show them how we collect up how we collected fossil and how we doing mold and how we put it together. So used to bother me a little bit when I would be working on all it was a hand or foot. I can't remember this was long time ago and you really end up with something looking really really need and then I'll send it would be gone one day and it it's you know, who knows if anybody ever look at it again, but I'll spend the rest of his life in the outer shell I know on a shelf that people come on do research and look at those laughing about how there's little room we can put our initials on their something like that added that we're still going to be here forever.

21:21 When I can't remember now, what was it we were doing and we we were uncovering the the bone and you do it in layers and Allison. We looked at that with this kind of looks like an Old Pueblo. So let's make some people to go out.

21:43 Pictures of wheat we had some people and we had maybe I can't remember if we had a car or something and you know, it's just something to liven up that kind of fun here in a little bit different. Yeah, and then there were other times when we'd be sitting there working and Kyle has

22:04 She kind of got his place where he sits and we think let's bug Kyle a little bit just to see if he's listening cuz he doesn't like to hear that you're working on million-year-old fossil. But you know, you have to have fun. I know he's he's gotten really good. He says well, that's why we make glue teach you how to glue a special super glue. It called paleobotanist for dinosaurs.

22:47 So they know they're going to be in pieces. In fact when they're doing the class. We learned a lot about plaster making and stuff and we always like to watch the new people that come along because how does a Class one or two every year and people come in and they have to learn how to do all these different staffs. And the first thing they learn how to do is plaster and you have to learn how to slake. It just you can't just pour the plaster in the water and stir you have to have your water and you put it in a little at a time little at a time and you caught stops liking until it builds up to the right point and then used to it and sell the what he has to tell them how to how to do this liking and then there's little moles. And the first thing they do in the class is a vague make something clear phone and then they get open it by the end of class and they're so proud of that bone little do they know that the next class Kyle has taken on Hammer and is

23:47 Mashed up that bone and the next class. I learned have to learn how to put keys back together that it's all there. So you learn how to do it with the plaster before you actually work on the real fossil. So I always like to look at them. Oh, I know I take a picture of them holding their little a little becomes and then the next class. I say it's in a plastic bag All In Pieces inside take a picture of him. I'm surprised if that at the number of people that have stuck with it at that point and it's a it's a hard class cuz you have to learn how to do all these different things and opening a jacket with a cast cutter and then

24:37 Kyle is a very precise person obviously because that's his job. And so there's a right way and a wrong way to do everything. But the more I'm around him and what will you do with the more I think yeah. It really does make sense to do it that way and I really think it is the quote, right? Yeah and just young in learning how to there's a reason behind everything how you you take the top off the jacket.

25:13 What you doing? What you don't do and remember one time because sometimes in the back in the old days in the field to separate the plaster from the dirt, they would put layers of news newspapers. Yeah, and now it now they say you was toilet paper but stovall's days that use newspaper as and there were some jackets that Stovall collected that they really didn't know how old it was. And so when we took the top off we were looking at the newspaper for hints of what was it. If it were there any dates on the on the newspaper that would give us a rough idea of how old the jacket was we to find a date. I don't know 19 40th Avenue scapula and it was like, okay, I'll get with the later one. Yeah, but

26:13 I remember when doctors to fail it came he said that he was opening jackets and stuff and reading about the Hindenburg disaster and the trial of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping that the newspapers wrapped around those fossils are dated those days. We never know what we're going to open it all jacket. It's always interesting because they don't really uncover anything the field. I just kind of find the edge of it and then in case all of it so they bring it all with the dirt around it and the plaster around it. So they kind of think they know what it is, but you never know until you open it. So it's always an adventure in your own worth of mercy of what the what the what the what the curators want to open. We're just kind of the workers.

27:13 But it's it's it's exciting. Can you never know what you're going to what you were going to work on when we are in Kyle has a photographic memory you can ask him about anything and then he'll still talk knowledgeably about and some some nice as it's fascinating what we end up talking about interesting conversation. We avoid politics and we avoid religion. Yeah tell me about it. It's fascinating. You never know what you're going to discover our sorrow nor talked about and other other times. Nobody talks will head our ears grow your scrubs going in those things are so noisy. Nobody can hear anything at all. Those are like a little miniature Jackhammer like a dentist's office.

28:13 Yeah like that we've been doing that lately because the jackets were working on now the Matrix around the fossils is so hard that you have to use the little normally if it's not that hard you can use little dental picks and exacto knives and things like that. But the things that we are working on right now the The Matrix around the fossil is so hard. We're having to use a little miniature Jack Hammer. So it's very noisy and it makes a lot of dust and so we do have to end up sweeping the floor and sweeping the table and doing all the time we have been on digs. We've we've been on digs. It's been I've been volunteering there since 94 and I finally to talk me into going to dig in the fall and this spring to, Western, Oklahoma.

29:13 Where an oil company do they were leveling grown to prepare a pad and they found what they thought was maybe bones and so they had to call in the state archaeologist who said no, these aren't people bones easier, but they were white though. It looked like it might be people so they called they let us come in and we on the middle of nowhere. I mean a really desolate country out in Western Oklahoma and it's windy and Dusty and Dustin my ears. I have Dustin my camera I still cash it but it was exciting though, cuz we were actually helping prepare the jackets that all these years we've been working on and

30:09 It was all total manual labor. Yes, you use you use little picks and shovels and and down on your hands and knees and it was hard work, but it was it was there were enough people that you could you could kind of trade-off and somebody will take when I'm getting a little tired and there be somebody waiting to take my place and so it was fun and we discovered

30:36 We we discovered. Well what we think or little camels.

30:45 And then there was one that that I keep bugging them to bring out that we can open up is the one that did Jennifer was working on that they take it was a jaw bone or something cuz I had teeth and had some teeth went down for nothing or cheap. But it was we were out in the field all day digging and doing plaster to cover it up and and Excavating rolling rolling one of those plaster jackets. It's it took five people too many. I took pictures and they would wander through and they roll it took forever and then you have to dig down until you hit the bone again, and then you put plaster on the bottom. So you have a giant plaster jacket that you have collected in the field. Some of we have we're starting to open some of those now in The Matrix on that stuff. That's why we're having to use that's why

31:45 Louisville Dental tool that's why I think we have us some dentists that volunteer to do this. I know how to use the tools and their used to doing a little delicate stuff but this stuff we're having to use the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the bone is brittle and so Kyle said the other day. He said well if we kind of dig down on pedestal, then we'll put it in some acid and see if they awaken will do that little better at something that we haven't even tried that yet. But I'm I said, there's always something different and it's always kind of fun and the other night I said, do you mind my going up to the Museum 2 nights a week? And he says no he says I can stay home and cook what I want and I don't care.

32:35 We did it. We have a good time. You never know what you're working on. No part of it. We worked on and it's on display in the museum. You can tell people LOL. I helped build that I know. I wish that I could put my name on some of that bunch is sound if it's Unique and

33:05 Items

33:07 There's just a lot of stuff there and there are things here that have been there for fifty years. Yeah, there's still some of doctors LOL stuff. I haven't opened they do have digs every summer and they are doing high school kids. They take them out to the same area that dr. Stovall found all the original in the western.

33:32 Oklahoma now, they have students every summer that go out and do Diggs and get a couple kids that the thing that will follow up and maybe be paleontologist. I don't know how I don't know but I'm I'm still amazed at how well just the other day. I just had this little like 2 inch piece of bone that I took over to Kyle and I said, what do you think this is it was just from a clod of dirt. So it's just pieces fragments of bone. And he said well, he's not really sure he thinks maybe it's part of a face or a job, but he he doesn't really know but even to look at that and knowledge that have that they have an anime just oh law really really? Well. In fact, I want to borrow one of the students that study paleontology here is now teaching an animated medical school and does digs in the summer.

34:32 Anatomy learning how to do the Paleo stuff that he is now teaching Anatomy at a medical school and then he does all his digs in the summer. I figured I'd just take the dirt off and that's all I do. We have fun is a social thing too. Cuz a lot of different people that volunteer there from all different areas backgrounds.

35:03 We have a lottery. Yeah, yeah and

35:08 Mary I have I help Mary get her second dog. That's right. That's right, and I wouldn't been able to do that if I had known married and so

35:21 We do have a good time. And I I think well, I think I'll continue doing this as long as I need a think I will too because this kind of goes along with my degree with anthropology and I and I figured that I worked all these years so I now I can do something that I got my education in and and can have fun with it and we learn a lot, you know, and I've since I also am a docent in the gallery. I've been doing a lot of Great Courses to learn more about how all are formed and how the dinosaurs what different areas are as they came from and stuff. So I'm also the stuff I work on in the lab. I can tell people about it in the gallery.

36:13 So I've been since I've retired I've been doing a lot more courses and stuff online so I can have more stories to tell you you really and follow up on that more than I do. I tell people what are you doing? I said, well, I'm a fossil preparator. They say a watch but I enjoy yes. I love it. I love it. I like the challenge. I love you. And I'm so many interesting people volunteer in the lab in December. We all get together and have a cross-party Christmas party. Well, we all bring food and this year I'm doing a PowerPoint all the pictures that I have taken all during the year of the Dig turning a jacket fits her entertainment for the yeah. I'm going to have them tank cuz I've taken pictures of all the stuff that we've

37:13 Turn all year and then we're going to have a dinner and then I'll be the PowerPoint show after we eat of all the stuff. We've done all year.

37:25 But as I said, I enjoy it and I like two people. Yeah, and I don't feel like we're helping the museum museum. This is that it is a good place. And if I had more time, I don't know if I could learn all of the stuff that you have to learn though. I really don't but we learned a lot in the lab ribs, we can we can find ribs and Beamers and stuff now and I appreciate you letting me reminisce a little bit on that dick together. Yeah, you convinced me to go out in the field and I'm doing dig. Yeah, I'm glad I did that old people on old people will it was mostly old people out in this big I have it was amazing that

38:25 People digging and shoveling and then we were sore the next day.

38:36 That's about all I can think of that. We enjoy the other people that volunteer at night with us. We like learning about all the fossils we get to prepare and we think maybe we're helping the museum ticket fish better than them.