Locals deal helping hand to Ace of Clubs
Volunteers give museum’s exterior an early spring cleaning
Armed with yard rakes, hedge clippers, brooms and lopping sheers, local volunteers descended on the Ace of Clubs House’s enclosed grounds Saturday morning for some outdoor sprucing.
Given the Ace of Clubs’ recent financial shortage, these local residents decided to volunteer their time to help tidy up the museum’s exterior appearance.
Split into five teams, the volunteers eagerly threw themselves into their work as they took full advantage of the bright, brisk, beautiful, late-winter weather to rake leaves, trim bushes, cut weeds and work flower beds in an effort to improve the Ace of Clubs’ outdoor scenery.
While one group, known as the Green Team, busied themselves clearing vines and weeds from around the museum’s carriage house and its west alleyway, which it shares with the St. James Episcopal Church, the Red Team picked up trash and edged along the brick sidewalks surrounding the home’s outer brick wall.
Volunteers designated as the Yellow Team swept the vintage home’s patio, porch and basement areas and knocked out cobwebs, while the Blue Team concentrated on weeding flower beds. A second Green Team trimmed hedges and bushes along the property’s outer
brick wall.
“Today, we are making history as the first citizens volunteer group the museum has ever had—to come together to take on this work as a commitment to helping preserve a house that is the only one of its kind— one architecturally designed like this (designed in the shape of a playing card club), ”said Peggy Speer, who serves on the 17-member Texarkana Museums System Board of Directors. “This is the goal of the board— keeping Texarkana history alive and passing it on to a whole new generation—a generation interested in what we have here in the cities’ museum system. The community needs to know that this is their treasure.”
Speer said that since the house doesn’t have an endowment, it’s now up to the community to step up and participate in the museum’s preservation.
Board members are attempting to raise and save money, specifically to help repair at least one rooftop stucco split, which is causing a rainwater leak affecting all three floors of the home.
Tammie Blackburn, a member of the local Lone Star Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, said that beyond the leak, all of the home’s windows eventually will need replacing.
“Besides holding tours, this home also has a meeting room that can be rented for parties and special events and a lawn that could be used for weddings,” said. “I wish we had volunteers to work on this home every day.”