Staff
Casie Vance
Executive Director
director@ameshistory.org
Alex Fejfar
Exhibits Manager
alex@ameshistory.org
Madeline Mongar-Brodie
Collections Manager
madeline@ameshistory.org
Savanna Johnson
Office Assistant
savanna@ameshistory.org
Emeritus Staff
Alan Spohnheimer
Margaret Vance
Dennis Wendell
Board of Directors
The Board of Directors consists of the following individuals, each serving a three-year term. It sets general policies, annual goals and future direction, and guides the museum in managing collections, programs, and financial affairs. Regular meetings are held on the third Thursday of each month. Board members are elected at the annual meeting in February. Board members also serve on committees such as Finance, Collections, and Hoggatt School. Community members are welcome to serve on committees - if interested, please contact us.
BOB BOURNE has been involved in studying history since grade school and spent most of his time in grade school and high school watching the Illinois Central and Rock Island trains from his classrooms. His primary interest is transportation history. He moved to Ames in 1981 to become the Transit Director for CyRide and developed the bus service in Ames during his 25-year career. Currently, he is a transit consultant specializing in small urban, rural and tribal transit service. He visited frequently with Farwell T. Brown in the 1990s as Farwell was researching transportation history in Ames. Bob researched Dinkey, streetcar, interurban and bus history in Ames through a variety of sources. He is an avid supporter of AHM and has been a board member since 2009. He is also involved in the James H. Andrew Museum and History Center at the Boone and Scenic Valley Railroad.
KEN CAMERON has been treasurer and a board member since 2004. He is a native of Renwick, growing up on a small farm. He attended Iowa Central Community College in Eagle Grove and received a BA in business administration from UNI. Ken's first 'real' job (not including fun farm jobs such as baling hay, shelling corn and walking beans) was in the accounting department of Wilson Packing Company in Cedar Rapids. After taking a year to help his dad farm, he started at the Iowa Department of Transportation in 1978, retiring in 2010. His jobs included internal auditing, computer programming and supervising the Motor Carrier Audit staff. Though not an Ames native, Ken has a long family history in the area. His great-great-grandparents, Henry and Amanda Cameron, came to Ontario, Iowa in the early 1850s. His great-great-grandfather, William Paskin, came from England in the 1860s to work in the coal mines in Boone County.
WAYNE CLINTON was born and raised in St. Louis. He remembers being one of just 12 Black students in his high school in the late 1950s. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s at Northeast Missouri University where he played basketball and competed in track. He came to Ames to teach junior high social studies and coach. By the time he retired 30 years later, Wayne had coached basketball, track and softball at Ames High School. Wayne served four terms on the Story County Board of Supervisors, retiring in 2016. He held leadership roles in the Iowa State Association of Counties and was awarded the organization’s Golden Eagle Award for his contributions to county government. He was inducted into the Iowa African American Hall of Fame in 2017. He joined the AHM board in 2019. Wayne enjoys learning and helping others learn more about the rich history of Ames.
PETER HALLOCK joined the Ames History Museum board in 2013 and currently serves as vice president. Peter is retired from the Iowa Department of Transportation, where he served primarily in the public transit program. He moved to Ames at the end of 2007, when the DOT relocated his job from Des Moines to Ames. He purchased a house in the Old Town Historic District and quickly became interested in early Ames history. He initially did research on John and Rowena Stevens and gave a presentation as part of the museum’s monthly lecture series. Since then, he has taught an Early Ames History course for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) program sponsored by the ISU Alumni Association, and has another course in preparation for winter 2022. He serves on the museum’s Hoggatt School Committee, Finance Committee and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Work Group.
Ames native, NANCY (LANDON) HEMPHILL graduated from Ames High School, Luther College with a BA, and Iowa State with an MS, with majors in sociology, education and counseling. Her counseling career included serving as a K-12 counselor at Dows, Iowa and a 5th-8th grade counselor at Roland-Story. She spent the last few years of her 33-year career as a house director at Alpha Delta Pi sorority at ISU. She and her late husband have two daughters and three grandchildren in Ames and Ankeny. She often remembers advice from her high school journalism teacher, Grace Bauske: “everyone has a story to tell”. This influenced both her choice of careers and her keen interest in history. She enjoys learning from the excellent lectures the Ames History Museum offers, attending the annual benefit dinners and volunteering at the museum where she loves “hearing stories” from the visitors! Nancy joined the board in 2022.
EDIE HUNTER is the Business Administrator for University Museums, Iowa State University, and a historian of 20th century U.S. social history and culture. She earned a B.S. in 1998 and a M.A. in 2022, both from Iowa State University. Her research in local history includes “From Fair View Farm to Parkview Heights: Involuntary Annexation and the Middle American Dream” published in the Fall 2020 edition of The Annals of Iowa and her master's thesis “Pounding Swords into Swords: War Monuments Lost During the Scrap Metal Drives of World War II.” A Midwesterner by birth, her roots run deep into the black soil of Iowa, and she is thrilled to join the board of the Ames History Museum. In addition to her work at University Museums and AHM, she serves as historian on the State Nomination Review Committee of the State Historic Preservation Office. Edie joined the AHM board in 2024.
BECKY JORDAN has lived in Ames all her life except for a brief period in West Des Moines. She attended Meeker Elementary, Central Junior High and Ames High School, graduating in 1971. She then went to Iowa State University, graduating in March 1975 with an English major and history minor. The following Friday, she began work as a secretary in the Department of Special Collections and Archives at the ISU Library. She was eventually promoted to library assistant III and then library assistant IV. Throughout her years at Parks Library, a large part of her work was handling reference requests on almost any topic relating to Iowa State University. It was a perfect job, as she learned something new every day through her reference work. She retired in 2017 after 42 years. She joined the board in 2019. She enjoys her involvement in AHM, as it allows her to keep in touch with local history.
MAGGIE LAWARE is an Associate Professor of English and Speech Communication at Iowa State University where she is an affiliate of the Women’s and Gender Studies program. She has lived in Ames since 1997. She holds a BA in English from Stony Brook University and an MA and PhD in Communications Studies from Northwestern University. Maggie’s mom was a substitute teacher of history and social studies in the high school she attended in Commack, Long Island and inspired Maggie’s life-long interest in history and love of history museums. Maggie’s favorite course to teach is one that looks at great speakers and speeches in American history, from the Revolution to recent speeches in the Iowa State House. Maggie’s husband is in the ISU history department. She has a daughter who received her BA in history and hopes to be a museum curator (and did an internship at the Ames History Museum). She joined the board in 2023.
CHRIS NELSON is a seventh-generation Ames native. After graduating from Iowa State in chemical and civil engineering, he and his wife, Anne, moved to Chicago to start their careers. After two years, jobs took them to Des Moines where they lived for nine years and had their three boys, Erik, Ian and Evan. In 2008, Chris and his family returned to Ames when he joined the family business, Nelson Electric. Since his return, he has been involved in the community, serving on the boards of several non-profit organizations including the Ames Chamber, FarmHouse Fraternity and Mainstream Living. He also served for six years on the Ames City Council. His family’s long history in Ames has led to a lifelong interest in Ames’ past. He joined the board in 2021. In his spare time, he enjoys running and biking and has recently started bringing new life to several old buildings in Ames.
MATT OAKLEY is the Chief Operating Officer of the Iowa Credit Union League and Affiliates Management Company (AMC), the holding company for the Iowa Credit Union League (ICUL). He provides leadership and strategic guidance for the ongoing development and growth of ICUL and AMC companies. Prior to this role, Matt was Chief Marketing Officer for AMC. He has also served in past roles as CMO for B2E Data, Inc., CMO for TMG Financial Services, and led marketing teams at Kreg Tool and Marsh. Matt holds a master’s degree from Webster University and a bachelor's degree from Wayne State College. Matt joined the AHM board in 2024.
KATE ORNGARD, her husband Charles, and four children ages 9 to 18 have called Ames home for more than seven years. They have lived all over the western half of the United States but feel truly ‘at home’ in Ames and are very grateful for the community. Kate is a realtor with Friedrich Iowa Realty and Charles is a financial advisor. Prior to joining the real estate business, Kate was in the I.T. recruiting world for 20+ years as a recruiter, national recruiting manager and ultimately a director of operations. Kate is excited to be part of the Ames History Museum board, joining in 2021, and create more awareness about the town’s rich history. She believes knowing and understanding where we’ve come from helps us to fully appreciate what we have as a community. The knowledge can guide us in creating an environment where children and generations to come will flourish and thrive. Kate currently serves as AHM's board president.
RYAN RILEY was born and raised in Ames and has been on the board since 2016. He lives in west Ames with his wife and two children. He graduated from Ames High School in 2010 and Iowa State University in 2014 with a degree in journalism and mass communication. Ryan is the photography and video specialist for the College of Human Sciences at Iowa State. Much of his time and effort on the board is spent working with Hoggatt School, a one-room schoolhouse that became Ames’ first school. He loves seeing families visit the school, sit in the desks and create a physical connection to local history that they hadn’t previously experienced. Ryan sees the work that the Ames History Museum does in archives and education as essential to the vibrancy of Ames. In his free time, he enjoys photography, watching films and working on his 1910 home.
PAMELA RINEY-KEHRBERG has been a member of the Ames community since 2000, when she joined the History Department at Iowa State University. She is currently Distinguished Professor of History, and teaches a wide variety of courses, from food history, to rural and agricultural history, to the U.S. in the first half of the twentieth century. She is the author of a number of books, including Rooted in Dust: Surviving Drought and Depression in Southwestern Kansas and Childhood on the Farm: Work, Play and Coming of Age in the Midwest, and editor of the Routledge History of Rural America. She is a Fellow of the Agricultural History Society. In 2022, University Press of Kansas will publisher her new book on Iowa in the Farm Crisis of the 1980s. Pamela joined the Ames History Museum board in 2022 and currently serves as secretary.
ALLISON SHERIDAN is a curator for the Farm House Museum, Iowa State University’s oldest campus building and a National Historic Landmark, collections manager, and communications / publications manager for University Museums at Iowa State. She is an ISU graduate with a BS in History (’01) and MS in Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies (’11). Allison joined the University Museums’ staff in 2001 and during her career has curated numerous exhibitions, authored publications, and conducted primary research on artist Christian Petersen, the Morrill Act, and Iowa State University history. She edits and is project manager for the online Iowa State University Biographical Dictionary. Her interests include object research and historical interpretation, curating exhibitions, contemporary glass, as well as publications and design. Allison lives in Ames with her husband and fellow travel enthusiast Chris. She joined the board in 2023.