Like Stella Weiler Taylor, Fox and Halim love Hamilton’s history and want to celebrate it, particularly some of the forgotten parts, with today’s generations, including children who might receive an emotional boost by knowing some of the amazing Hamilton people who did interesting things for Hamilton and the world.
Fittingly, the first exhibit for the history room will be Stella Weiler Taylor herself.
The room will be dedicated Saturday, March 28 from 2-5 p.m. It will be open to the public, with drinks and snacks served. A song that Taylor wrote in 2016 with Will H. Lebo called “My Hamilton,” which Fox hopes will become Hamilton’s official song, will be sung during the event.
Halim, who enjoys reading to children, will play Taylor during the event.
Fox has eight ancestors who were involved with the Children’s Home, which was incorporated 151 years ago this May. One of them, her grandmother, Emma Sault Berk, who lived at the home from 1877-1879 before being adopted.
“She loved literature, she loved theater, she loved the arts, and so we together want to be a voice for that,” Halim said.
“I would love to inspire kids with some of the forgotten history,” she said. “There are writers, and screenwriters, and actors, and really beautiful things that have happened in our city that people don’t remember anymore, but Stella kept for us. So we have these stories, and treasures.”
Acclaimed writer William Dean Howells, for instance, wrote “Years of My Youth,” about his boyhood in Hamilton, she noted.
On this, the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote, Fox noted that many of the people who operated the Children’s Home and served on its board were women.
“What we would like to do is reach out to local families, local community organizations, and we would like to connect in with children’s groups, scout groups, home-school groups, the schools, and invite them in to part of Hamilton history, specifically the history of children in the city,” Halim said.
“We’ll have different interactive things for kids to do,” she said. “One of the things about Stella is she’s called the Lady of Letters. She wrote thousands and thousands of letters, and corresponded, and that was part of her column. So I’ve got some lavender paper there, and we have a little letter-writing area. And we just want to encourage people to treasure things in the way that Stella did.”
“She just really loved the city well, and loved people,” Halim said. “We want to encourage people to slow down, and remember.”
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