'SMITHSONIAN OF THE OZARKS': VOLUNTEERS WORK TO REVEAL BEAUTY OF A LOCAL LANDMARK

MARBLE HILL, Mo. -- Clad in a worn sweatshirt and sweat pants, Norm Kenner carefully scraped varnish from an old wooden door while his wife, Jarrell, worked in the former Will Mayfield College building to strip a transom window frame down to its dark wood grain.

The Kenners see solid beauty beneath the dust and grime of a once-neglected and abandoned building. They also see a treasure chest of potential.

They are among a handful of Marble Hill area residents who have been working for months to renovate the 77-year-old former Baptist college building into a science and history museum that will feature a working lab for paleontologists and dinosaur fossils.

Historic-preservation students at Southeast Missouri State University have helped from time to time. One, Alicia Bradley, spent Monday night in the unheated building sanding an old wooden stair bannister because "It's just an extraordinary building," she said.

Self-taught paleontologist Guy Darrough, 48, of Arnold, Mo., plans to display many of his fossils in the building, along with a variety of other artifacts.

Darrough said he will provide most of the exhibits and the signs for the various items to be displayed in the museum. The local historical society also is expected to exhibit items such as antique toys in the museum.

"It won't be a little Andy of Mayberry type natural history with old brown labels and things pickled in jars," he said.

Darrough wants to exhibit "beautiful minerals, crystals and fossils from all over the world." Other exhibits could focus on everything from Civil War memorabilia to Indian artifacts.

The lab and some temporary exhibits in the building should be ready in time for the Mississippi River Valley Scenic Drive on April 21 and 22.

Renovated rooms on the first floor will be open to the public from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days. The public will be able to view the work in the lab from behind large tempered glass windows.

Eye on the future

When complete, the Bollinger County museum will be first rate, Darrough says. "I believe it will be the Smithsonian of the Ozarks."

"That's what keeps you going," said Eva Dunn, a Marble Hill librarian who doesn't mind getting her hands dirty. "You see the vision of what it will be like when it is done," she said as she worked to restore a window frame in a first-floor room in the building.

Those frames alone are a major chore. The building has nearly 200 windows.

Dunn and her fellow volunteers are part of the Mayfield Heritage Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation that is working to restore the former school.

The group, aided by a private grant, has spent about $25,000 to reroof the building and tuckpoint the exterior to prevent further water damage. First-floor walls have been replastered and repainted. The tin ceiling has a new coat of paint.

The group has raised another $10,000 to $12,000 and has a goal of about $250,000 to complete the project. The foundation wants to install central air and heating in the building this year.

The first floor could be completely renovated and open on a regular basis by next spring. It could take several more years to renovate the upper two floors where water damage is more extensive.

Building history

The three-story Mayfield building sits atop a hill a short distance from the junction of highways 34 and 51. Constructed in 1924 as an art and science building, the brick structure was part of Will Mayfield College, a Baptist high school and two-year college that closed in 1934.

Lottie Bollinger bought the old college in 1942 and established the El Nathan retirement home. She planned to open a hospital in the art and science building in the 1940s but later scrapped the idea. El Nathan still owns the building.

The building has been vacant for nearly 70 years, except for a brief time when a church group used it to house two Laotian families about 20 years ago.

For the past three years, civic leaders like car dealer and Mayfield foundation president Dave Thomas have been working to save the building and find a good use for the structure.

They first tried to interest Southeast Missouri State University in using the structure for a higher-education center. School officials rejected the idea.

Then along came Darrough, who proposed turning the old college building into a museum to house his fossils, dinosaur models he created and other artifacts.

The Mayfield Heritage Foundation has a 50-year lease on the building.

Digging up bones

Darrough plans to have a fossilized dinosaur skull unearthed in Wyoming on display for the scenic drive.

In the working lab, he wants to further study dinosaur fossils he has been digging up at a site near Glen Allen in Bollinger County. The site is the only known dinosaur site in the Midwest, Darrough says.

Darrough's collections include one of tektites, pieces of rock that are thrown into space from the impact of a meteorite. The pieces of rock then burn as they re-enter the atmosphere and land on Earth as various colored glass.

He has other collections too, ranging from 2,500-year-old Indian artifacts from Mexico to Thomas Edison's "talking machines," old cylinder record machines.

He eventually plans to install in the museum a 1 1/2-ton piece of sandstone from Lance Creek, Wyo., that is covered with fossilized plants and bones. The fossils are from a variety of animals, everything from dinosaurs to turtles and fish that lived 70 million years ago, Darrough said.

Darrough hasn't been paid for his efforts or his collections. But he said he expects the museum will one day be profitable and be able to pay him for some of his collections.

Darrough is convinced the museum will be a popular place. "Everybody likes dinosaurs," he said.