After nearly 18 years working to preserve local history, Bartlesville Area History Museum Collections Manager Debbie Neece will retire from the City of Bartlesville effective April 26.
“Debbie is passionate about Washington County and the preservation of its history,” said Shellie McGill, director of the Bartlesville Area History Museum and Bartlesville Public Library. “She has been an invaluable resource for our community researching and providing historical information and stories while also documenting current history as it occurs. Her willingness to share her knowledge in an accurate, interesting way has been exceptional. She will be greatly missed.”
Neece began her association with the history museum by coincidence after stumbling across a Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise article asking families to submit their histories and photographs to be compiled into a book, “Family Histories of Washington County Area.” The project piqued her interest and the rest, as they say, was (literally) history.
Up until that point, Neece admittedly had been uninterested in local history. She was raising two children and managing Bartlesville-based Center for Coaching and Mentoring Inc.
She wanted to assist on the book project, so she continued working part-time at CCM, often early in the morning and on weekends. She spent her afternoons and evenings volunteering on the book project alongside Vicki Stewart.
“I got engaged in reading all of the family histories,” Neece says. “But I didn’t even know the streetscapes of Bartlesville. I thought, I’ve got to learn, so I pulled out a map and started studying.”
After the book was printed, Neece transitioned to part-time grant facilitator and photo archivist in 2008. In 2010, she became the museum’s collections manager, all while working concurrently at CCM, until 2018.
“Every hour I have invested in this position has been a constant in the betterment of our museum and connecting our museum to the public,” Neece says.
Neece and BAHM staff accessioned more than 147,000 additional images into the museum’s collection during her tenure, and also undertook the organization and digitization of records from local funeral homes, newspapers and city directories.
“The most rewarding part of working here has been watching the collections grow,” she said.
During her years of service, Neece wrote or co-wrote multiple books, including “Kent Tibbets, Memoir of a Cowboy: The Stories of a Ranching and Rodeo Cowboy,” “Meet Me at the Roundup 1908-1949: The Life and Legacy of Jacob H. Bartles” with Bill Alexander, “If Bartlesville Walls Could Talk” with Vicki Stewart and Barbara Garrison; and “Vaudeville to Cinema: The History of Entertainment and Theater in Bartlesville and the Surrounding Area” with Ronnie Roe.
And when the COVID-19 pandemic forced BAHM staff to work remotely, Neece spent the time working on a one-volume revision of Margaret Teague’s 1967-68 two-volume “History of Washington County and Surrounding Area” — with added photographs and a complete index.
In 2017, Neece also began writing the first of dozens and dozens of articles about local history for the Bartlesville Monthly Magazine.
Neece intends to push full steam ahead into her retirement, noting plans already in progress to write multiple books and additional magazine articles covering various facets of local history.
“I’ll be retiring from working, but I’ll still be writing because I can’t quit,” Neece says. “If I quit writing our history, somebody’s going to forget … and I can’t allow them to forget.”
Neece and her husband, Steve, have two children, nine grandchildren and two fur babies.