MONTGOMERY, Ala. -In North Alabama, letters written in pencil by a young Helen Keller are fading away after being exposed to light for more than 120 years. Drawings and paintings by German soldiers imprisoned in the state during World War II are endangered by humidity in West Alabama. County records dating back to the Civil War and beyond are turning brittle and disintegrating in courthouses all over the state.
Pieces of Alabama’s past are in danger of being lost, and preservationists are developing ways to save them from the elements without one essential ingredient: Additional state funding.
Budgets are tighter than ever, and Gov. Robert Bentley is proposing $3.3 million in spending cuts to dozens of museums and historic sites that received state money last year. Museums, libraries and historical groups are applying for private and federal grants, raising money and forging new partnerships among themselves in an attempt to save important artifacts the state literally can’t afford to worry about.
“We’re losing a lot of our history because we don’t have an ability to preserve it,” said Mary Bess Paluzzi, executive director of the Aliceville POW Museum and Cultural Center in Pickens County. Her museum stands to lose some $50,000 in state funding.
Some 6,000 German soldiers were housed at Camp Aliceville as prisoners of war during World War II, and many spent their time in Alabama painting and sketching. Only a chimney remains from the 823-acre camp, but a small museum houses the prisoners’ artwork and other artifacts.