By CLARA CARTRETTE

Sometimes I think I’m dreaming when I think of the N.C. Museum of Forestry. A state museum??? In Columbus County??? It’s hard to believe we’re so lucky!

We, the population, are lucky to have it here, but it was hard work by a lot of people — not luck — that brought the museum to Columbus County. The N.C. Museum of Forestry opened in the summer of 2000 in the old Pioneer Savings building on South Madison Street in downtown Whiteville, the creation of a reality from a bright idea over a period of years.

One of the Forestry Museum’s claims to fame is that it’s the only museum in the state with a working drive-through window. It comes in handy when the museum has its tree give-aways. Fifty thousand loblolly pines have been given away in the past five years.

How fortunate we are to have the museum, a satellite of the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, and to have Harry Warren as its director. It’s amazing how far the museum has come in its short life, thanks to the competent staff.

As the museum grows, so does the staff. Working with Warren are Patricia Jones, administrative assistant; Sara Capps, exhibit coordinator; Karen Elizabeth Eyerly, educator; Cindy Coble, weekend staff; and Robb Cross, maintenance supervisor and weekend staff.

Before accepting the director’s position at the Forestry Museum, Warren worked with the Cape Fear Museum in Wilmington. He noted that he was hired here in 2000 “and we’ve been growing inch by inch ever since,” Warren said during a luncheon before Christmas for the museum’s board of directors and other guests.

A multi-million dollar museum expansion project will get underway soon, working through the state Museum of Sciences, or the “Mother Ship,” as Warren calls it. The project involves the Fuller property next door that the museum acquired last year.

A representative of the architectural firm that will design the project said that the museum “has an amazingly bright future” and has the opportunity to be one of the most impressive places in the state. “The timing couldn’t be better, as people begin to understand and appreciate the environment,” he said.

“We’re cautiously optimistic but I do feel that the sun is rising over this museum,” Warren said.

Among the luncheon guests was Peter Toth, the wood sculptor who was then finishing two gigantic sculptures in the museum’s back yard. One remained at the museum and one went to the Waccamaw Siouan Tribal Grounds. Warren said Toth’s work on site has generated a lot of statewide publicity for the museum.

Warren gave a brief report of the museum’s activities during 2005, using slides to illustrate his presentation. He noted that the museum’s collections grew this year. Among the treasures is a dugout made by the late Doe Doe Clewis of Crusoe Island and donated by Johnny McNeill. Great slabs of various kinds of trees, gathered in the 1890s, represent a variety of trees in North Carolina. They take visitors from the mountains to the coast and show how forests were at the turn of the century.

The museum has fossils found at Hallsboro and Warren said he hopes to revive work for this exhibit. Decorating the museum’s walls are great art panels of swampland that Warren obtained from the state museum where they were stored.

Many programs at the museum bring in lots of people, especially school students, and the museum has supplied science education tools for some students. Hundreds of second graders attended a special program during the N.C. Pecan Harvest Festival that included Bug Fest, a popular exhibit that came from the state museum in Raleigh. Some even got to taste gourmet bugs and enjoyed the Roachingham 500, a competition between cockroaches “Roachard Petty” and “Dale Roachart.” Warren said the museum had 17 or 18 people working that day and had 1,265 visitors.

The museum has not only been a place for visitors to tour and enjoy, but a gathering place for many community events. It has hosted a variety of civic groups as well as social events, including a tourism summit meeting, the Chamber of Commerce’s Cattle Baron’s Ball and provided programs for the hundreds of Cycle North Carolina bikers who spent the night in Whiteville. It was a distribution center for the Southeastern Geological Society’s Heritage Book, and it hosted two well-attended art exhibits featuring the works of local artists Mickey Hobbs and Kenny White, and Thomas Bennett, artist-in-residence at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences.

Toth carved cypress trees into giant Native American sculptures on the museum grounds. He carved his first giant sculpture in Wilmington in 1976 and after 15 years it went to the Tribal Grounds in the Buckhead community. One of those he completed in December will replace that weather-worn sculpture. Toth travels around the country doing his giant sculptures, becoming a resident of the place where he happens to be working.

Warren said he contacted Toth three or four years ago and when he learned that he would come to Columbus County, Tom Rowland made arrangements to have two giant cypress trees cut for the statues. Warren said Donald Nunnery of the Forest Service played the forklift like playing a violin while unloading the trees. Toth started working on the sculptures on Oct. 31 and finished just before Christmas.

The museum’s outreach program took the staff to the N.C. Forest Festival in Plymouth and to Farm Heritage Day at Indigo Farms in Horry County, S.C. to publicize the museum. Reading from one page in the museum’s registration book, Warren said there were guests from Hampstead, Raleigh, Belmont, New Hampshire and Brazil, “a pretty good spread of visitors to a little Forestry Museum in Southeastern North Carolina.”

The museum’s expansion project will include razing the old Fuller Furniture building for green space. Architects are conferring with specialists now to determine the museum’s best direction, which will be determined by funding from the N.C. General Assembly. Columbus County’s legislative delegation, Sen. R.C. Soles and Rep. Dewey Hill, were commended for their efforts in bringing the museum to its current level and can expect to hear from the museum board in its latest quest to make the museum bigger and better.

Butch Blanchard, chairman of the museum board, said serving as the chairman of the museum board has been a good journey, “and it just gets better and better.”

“We’re only as good as the sum of our parts, and you are a part,” Warren told the group. “We want a state-of-the-art, cutting edge museum, as fine as any in the country.”

I love the museum, its purpose, its beauty and spaciousness. There is a friendliness there that you don’t find at most museums. I think Warren and his staff have gone out of their way to convey the message to everyone that “it’s your museum.”

And my two young grandsons, 4-year-old Brady and 7-year-old Brennan, believe them. They don’t set foot in Whiteville that they don’t beg to go to “The Bear Museum,” a name they gave it early on when the stuffed bear in the former bank vault was the main attraction.