May

Celebrating 40 years of service

In 1970, Jane Dunphy, of Arlington, Va., and Barbara Lowis Lehman of Rockville, Md., responded to a newspaper ad asking for volunteers at the National Museum of American History. Forty years later, they are both still docents at MAH, sharing their knowledge of different aspects of the American experience with visitors to the museum.

Barbara Lowis Lehman

“When I stopped working at the Department of Commerce, I thought about becoming a teacher,” Dunphy recalls. “But volunteering has turned out to be exactly what I wanted to do.”

Conducting school tours allows Dunphy to combine her love of children with her love of history. She began her career as a docent leading students through the “Road Vehicles Hall,” a precursor to what is now the museum’s new transportation exhibit, “America on the Move.”

“I learned many things doing these tours. And I found that if you ask children enough questions, and show them big examples, they figure it out,” Dunphy says about explaining transportation objects and themes to young children.

Lehmann found her niche at the museum through her childhood experiences. “At a young age, I realized I had more fun in the workshop with my father than in the kitchen with my mother,” she recalls.

Jane Dunphy

Lehman served for many years as the docent in the museum’s “Engines of Change: The American Industrial Revolution, 1790-1860” exhibition where she helped visitors learn more about the machines she knows so well. She is particularly knowledgeable about a section of the exhibit she refers to as “the machine shop” and enjoyed her in-depth conversations with interested visitors of all ages. “I’m here to serve the public and kids,” Lehmann says. “I like to go into detail instead of making things seem artificial.”

The “Engines of Change” exhibit has since closed and Lehmann currently works as a docent, along with Dunphy, in “America on the Move.” Although the exhibits at American History, and even the building itself, have changed and evolved over the course of 40 years, one constant has been Dunphy’s and Lehman’s dedication and commitment to helping educate the museum’s visitors.

“I still enjoy coming to the museum,” Dunphy says. “It’s been a wonderful learning experience.”