504633_AnnualReportTXT_FINAL

Making New Connections
From the “old clinic building” on Harkers Island, the foundation of our institution began to take
shape. Partners from across the state began to take notice of the true community-based “movement to
preserve, share and celebrate our traditions” emerging from the Down East communities and joined
with us to establish the fundamental values of the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum that today, 25
years later, remain the undergirding principles of our work.
• Membership – the backbone of all the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum has ever accomplished
– began to grow statewide, reaching 1000 members by 1995.
• The Coastal Heritage teacher workshops partnership with NC State University and East
Carolina University allowed museum volunteers the opportunity to reach teachers from
across the state to explore our coastal communities – past and present.
• The North Carolina Arts Council begins funding oral history projects to record old-time carvers and hunting
guides including Mr. Homer Fulcher, Julian Hamilton, Roy Willis, and others.
• NC State University’s Language and Life program comes to Harkers Island to record the island dialect, and
develop an archive of local voices.
• The CSWM participated in the historic opening of the NC Museum of History in Raleigh.
• Mr. Homer Fulcher and Jul’ Hamilton were the first decoy carvers to receive the North Carolina Folk Heritage
Awards in 1996.
Carl Huff, Kevin Daniels and others build the porch of the “Old Museum”
in 1993 where carvers, school students, friends and visitors would gather
for more than 10 years while the Core Sound’s facility was being built.
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North Carolina Heritage Award recipients Julian Hamilton and Homer
Fulcher are congratulated by Representative Jean Preston at the Awards
Ceremony in Raleigh.
Roy Willis chops for school students, museum visitors
and all who will watch and listen throughout eastern
North Carolina including the Estuarium in Washington
and the NC Museum of History in Raleigh.