Local volunteer featured in exhibit

Photo provided Visitors to the South Carolina State Museum's exhibit "Our National Treasure: The American Red Cross" enter a tent to examine artifacts designed to help victims of house fires. An emergency readiness kit contains drinking water and food rations, work gloves, a rain poncho, flashlight and batteries, duct tape and more. The exhibit illustrates the history of this vital organization and the many life-saving functions it serves.

By RANDY BURNS
Item Staff Writer
rburns@theitem.com

South Carolina residents still have time to see the American Red Cross exhibit at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia before it leaves Sunday on a national tour scheduled to run until 2014.

The Red Cross exhibit, Our National Treasure: The American Red Cross has been at the museum since March 14, said Nancy Cataldo, service center director for the Central South Carolina chapter in Sumter.

Photo provided A museum display speaks to the founding of the Red Cross by Clara Barton.

Cataldo said the exhibit showcases how the Red Cross has responded to disasters. It also provides information on what the Red Cross can do for military families, hospital patients and those in need of lifesaving skills. The exhibit features artifacts, interactive quizzes, photographs and a video with South Carolina Red Cross stories.

Some of the artifacts and photographs provided by the Red Cross have never been shown publicly.

The exhibit is a joint venture between the South Carolina State Museum and the American Red Cross, officials said.

Photo provided The Red Cross exhibit "Our National Treasure: The American Red Cross" has been at the State Museum since March and includes a video of Sumter's Eugenia Bradford Mabry and a photo of Sumter's Connie Harvey. The exhibit will leave Columbia after Sunday.

Cataldo said the national exhibit features a video interview with Sumter's own Eugenia Bradford Mabry, a Red Cross volunteer who met her husband-to-be, Buford Mabry, while he was in a military hospital after a mine took his leg.

Cataldo will have a second look at the exhibit when she attends the annual meeting of the American Red Cross on Wednesday, she said.

"I recommend this exhibit to everybody," Cataldo said. "A lot of people don't realize what Red Cross does. This exhibit paints a real good picture of Red Cross."

There's also a photo of Sumter's own Connie Harvey, a state Red Cross employee, teaching CPR.

The exhibit also covers the founding of the Red Cross in 1881 by Clara Barton, the former Massachusetts schoolteacher and government worker who became famous for her care of wounded soldiers during the Civil War.

Tri-county Red Cross officials and volunteers are invited to Wednesday's annual meeting scheduled at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday at the museum.

The exhibit is free with museum entry - $7 adults, $5 senior citizens, $3 children 3-12 and free for children under 3.

To schedule a private tour, contact Libby Anne Inabinet at (803) 540-1220 or inabinelib@usa.redcross.org.