William (Bill) Lawrence has served as Executive Director of the San Diego History Center since February 2016 after joining the History Center in July 2015 as Chief Operating Officer. Prior to joining the History Center Bill’s professional career spanned three decades with the KFMB Stations (KFMB-TV, AM & FM), providing a “front row seat” to the history being made in our region. For more than a decade Bill was also an adjunct faculty member of Southwestern Community College having taught broadcast writing, photography and production.
He gave an excellent talk about the various artifacts and collections that he has accumulated at the SD History Center. The original name was San Diego History Society, which later changed to San Diego History Center. He said there are about 45 million documents in their collection and one priceless document they found 7 years ago was a document signed by Abraham Lincoln using his full signature as shown below!
He also distributed some interesting pictures to club members based on who could answer some puzzles :-). He had pictures of the demolition of an ancient victorian tower from 1914, and the picture of Lucy & Ricky (from the Here's Lucy television show) enjoying the horse races at the Del Mar racetrack.
He added that they have about 2.5 million photos, 17,000 objects and a special diary of Victoria Jacobs, who wrote her life story in it but died during child birth. In the end he mentioned about a big dinner/reception event on April 21st called the "Makers of San Diego History". Tickets can be purchased at the link above.
The public viewing timings for the History Center are from Wed to Fri from 9:30 am to 1:30 pm. During other days the public can setup appointments. More information can be found at https://sandiegohistory.org/san_diego_history_center/.
Since Bill Sutton is on vacation. Vicky Mallett was the substitute club President today and awarded the Joshua Malawi school certificate to Bill that represents donation of school supplies by DMSB to schools in Malawi in the name of the speaker.
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