FORT SMITH -- An event at the Kay Rodgers Park Expo Center kicked up more than dust last weekend, raising more than $250,000 for the U.S. Marshals Museum, officials said.
The museum released the net proceeds Thursday from the "U.S. Marshals Stampede: Kickin' Up the Dust," which drew more than 700 guests Saturday night for music, food, and an auction in an Old West atmosphere to raise money for the proposed 50,000-square-foot museum on the banks of the Arkansas River.
In a news release from the museum, President and CEO Jim Dunn thanked the volunteers who worked to produce the "once-in-a-lifetime event."
"I'd also like to thank the Fort Smith community, as well as our statewide and national supporters who have been instrumental in helping us raise the funds to get this museum built," he said.
Several local corporations, businesses and private residents sponsored the event.
The museum is in the middle of a campaign to raise the estimated $50 million cost of building the U.S. Marshals Service national museum and developing the exhibit galleries it will feature. The community got a glimpse of how the museum plans to tell the story of the Marshals Service in a presentation last week by exhibit designer Brent Johnson Design Inc. of Boston.
Also at that presentation, Dunn announced the donation of $1 million for the museum in the name of the late Samuel Sicard from First Bank Corp., the parent company of First National Bank of Fort Smith, Citizens Bank and Trust Co., and BHC Insurance, and a matching $1 million to First Bank Corp.'s donation from Sicard's family and friends.
The museum's Hall of Honor, a memorial gallery to marshals who have died in the line of duty, will be named in Sicard's honor, Dunn said.
The campaign has raised about $20 million so far, including a $5 million anonymous donation in September. A three-coin set commemorating the Marshals Service's 225th anniversary was issued in January by the U.S. Mint. Sales of the coins are expected to raise up to $5 million in surcharges for the museum.
And last month, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia became the first speaker in the Winthrop Paul Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture Series, which explores how the Marshals Service relates to the three branches of government. Rockefeller's widow, Lisenne Rockefeller, agreed to give $100,000 to underwrite the lecture series.
NW News on 03/20/2015