Although finalized in May, and already well used internally, we are excited to make this product of our VOF Special Project Fellow, Kellen Hope, available to all interested members of our community.
This Jack Dawson Inventory Fellowship Report was the result of VOF staff and special project fellows performing an inventory of Jack Dawson’s earnest and rich homestead, which had been shuttered left vacant since his passing.
Our VOF Fellow who led us through this challenge, Kellen Hope, received her BA in Anthropology with a minor in Mediterranean Archaeology and a MA in Museum Studies. She is currently a full-time Collections Care and Preservation Fund Contractor for the Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum. She joined the Virginia Outdoors Foundation as a 2020 Special Project Fellow to assist with the Jack Dawson Project. As a Virginia Outdoors Foundation (VOF) Fellow and the Head of Collections and Cataloging for this special project, Kellen brought her museum expertise, research prowess, and a keen eye that helped lead the VOF Preserve team through the cataloging of Jack Dawson’s home and its contents. Thanks to Kellen this inventory will forever serve as an important historical and archaeological in situ snapshot of the unique life that was lived by Jack Dawson, within the Bull Run Mountains, between 1917 and 2012.
This inventory (and the resulting fellowship report) is just the first deliverable of many that will come from inaugural team of 2020 Special Projects fellows and interns, as we are currently pairing VOF Special Projects Fellow, Miguel Montalvo’s evocative photography of the Jack Dawson homestead site with a series of essays that will provide readers with a contextualized personable look into Jack Dawson’s life, and world, here within the Bull Run Mountains.
Our community has also been essential in this pursuit, as many of you all have provided oral histories pertaining to Jack Dawson. We hope that these stories will continue to flow from you all to us, and we will be able to anchor them as eternal glimpses into the folk that have shaped this mountain range into what it is today.
If you have any information or anecdotes about Jack Dawson, please reach out to me at jvillari@vof.org or 571-438-8957
