CHANGING OF GUARD
Shearer steps down: Former editor instrumental in growing historical society Henning takes reins: Business owner assumes post with town’s 150th ahead
LANSDALE » A new year has brought a new leader to a local organization about to celebrate a big milestone.
And Bill Henning, the new president of the Lansdale Historical Society, has big plans for reconnecting Lansdale to its history, in 2021 and beyond.
“We want to focus more on the social media aspect, of trying to get the younger generations interested in their history. There’s so much interesting stuff there,” Henning said.
“I come across people all the time, when I’m describing an old building downtown, and start telling them the history of it, and they’re just fascinated,” he said.
Located at 137 Jenkins Avenue in a house nearly a century older than the borough itself, the Lansdale Historical Society is a nonprofit dedicated to preserving as much of the town’s heritage as possible, and making it available and accessible to the public. For all but two of the last 20 years, it’s been led by former longtime Reporter editor Dick Shearer, who was honored in 2015 with the borough’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his efforts at historic preservation, and who said this week he felt the time was right to hand over the reins.
“I was 56 or 57 when I took over, and I was a youngster — I brought down the mean age of the society by about ten years, just by joining,” he said with a chuckle.
“Now it’s at the point where a lot of us are in our upper 60s, 70s, even early 80s, and one thing I was determined to do is see if we could find somebody who was younger, who would be able to do it, had an interest in history, and was familiar with the community,” Shearer said.
Henning, who will officially take over as president on March 1, fits that description, and much more. A lifelong
borough resident who operates the family business, Henning’s Trains on Line Street, he’s also been a borough councilman in 2009 and since 2018, is a board member of local event nonprofit Discover Lansdale, a member of the Lansdale 150th Anniversary Celebration Committee planning to mark the borough’s birthday in 2022, a local Scout leader, has organized the annual Cruise Night since 2011, and led a local effort to preserve the town’s historic borough hall in 2013.
“Somehow that all kind of fell together — I’ve kinda got one foot in all of them,” Henning said.
In pre-2020 years, the society would host monthly community programs with experts presenting on topics from town history, to audiences of dozens if not hundreds of residents who shared their memories and memorabilia. Those in-person events have been on hold since the arrival of COVID-19 last March, but the community interest is still there, as seen by the hundreds of likes and comments each day on the historical photos Shearer posts on the LHS Facebook page.
“Dick’s Facebook posts have been a huge hit. People just love seeing the old aerial photos, or some of the pictures of what some of the buildings used to be,” Henning said.
“Without being able to
meet as groups, we’re going to start doing maybe 30-minute presentation v ideos, w ith Dick and some of the guys, to post online. There are so many good stories to be shared,” he said.
Plans and timing are st ill up in the air, but those video presentations could go on the LHS Facebook page too, or outside platforms like YouTube, at least until in-person events are allowed again. Longer-term projects include one that’s already
been underway for years: restoration of the borough freight station, located just east of Broad and Vine Streets, which volunteers have helped clean out and maintain since Discover bought it in 2016.
“Right now, we’re kind of running out of things for volunteers to do. We’re at the point where we need contractors — after we let the contractors do the flooring and the utilities, then there’ll be plenty of opportunities for volunteers,” Henning said.
2021 marks the 50th year since the societ y was founded, and Henning said while dates and times are still being final
ized, LHS will find ways to celebrate its own birthday this year, likely including commemorations during the borough’s Founders Day events in late August, ahead of a year of larger celebrations for the borough in 2022.
“We didn’t want the historical society to get lost in the shuff le with the 150th the following year; that’s why we’re celebrating the historical society this year,” he said.
Shearer rec a lled the days the so c ie t y was founded in the early 1970s, when the Jenkins Homestead which the society now operates faced an uncertain future.
“It wa s pr i m a r i ly formed to save the Jenkins house, which was up for sale with the idea that it was going to be bought by a developer, who would tear it down and put up townhouses,” he said.
“The borough got involved when the 100th, Centennia l, committee decided it wouldn’t be a really great idea to have the oldest house in town torn down on the eve of the centennial.”
At that time, a group of citizens formed the historical society, which allowed the borough to contribute funding: “I think after the first meeting they had about $8, and they really built on that, with all kinds of events, yard sales, tours of other communities and historic sites,” Shearer said.
Those events were advertised as far as Philadelphia radio stations, and ultimately led to the society adding a new roof, renovating the interior, and making the former Jenkins home fully accessible. The society did much of the same again just next door when it acquired the building that is now their
research center in 2000.
“The late Dick Stricker is really the one who saw the building up for sale next door, and said something to me about it . I said, ‘We haven’t got the money to buy that,’ and he says, ‘Well, the borough does,’” said Shearer.
“The next thing I knew, he parades himself down to borough hall, and starts twisting arms, and sure enough, they went and bought it,” he said.
The research center now houses an array of town ar tifacts, archives containing over 120,000 digital images, and “somewhere between 500,000 and 700,000 images” in the form of negatives and slides, which are in the process of being digitized.
“We have rows and rows and racks and racks of this stuff, and slowly but surely, we’re going through it all and trying to digitize it. That’s probably the thing I’m proudest of: we’ve been able to collect and archive this stuff,” Shearer said.
And Facebook followers, don’t worry: those near-daily posts will continue for as long as people keep liking them, with the occasional membership or donation request mixed in too.
“For a small operation like we are, I think that kind of outreach does a whole lot of good,” Shearer said.
O t her a c c ompl i sh - ments during his tenure at the helm have been developing a “Saving Historic Lansdale” list of local buildings worthy of preser vation, establishing a museum annex of display cases outside the caucus room at borough hall, writing a series of “Back in Time” essays detailing certain aspects of the area’s history, which have since been compiled and sold as books, and securing decades of archival material from The Reporter in late 2019.
What’s next for Shearer? Taking a step back does not mean a step away; he’ll still be involved in planning the 2021 LHS c om memorat ions a nd 2022 borough birthday, if not quite as involved as he was for the centennial in 1972.
“When we celebrated the 100th, I got to see almost none of it, because I was the one that was left with getting the paper out every day! They had things going on, all throughout the week, and I was pretty much stuck at the paper,” Shearer said.
“New blood brings new ideas ... but I’ l l still be around,” nhe added.