Volunteers with the Dan Moody Museum are asking city leaders for funding to hire extra help as more visitors flock to the attraction honoring the Taylorborn Texas governor, soldier and foe of the Ku Klux Klan.
In the meantime, the volunteers are making plans to honor the museum’s namesake, who was also Texas’ youngest governor, with a life-size statue.
“Once again, our efforts to keep the Moody open are still hampered by the lack of docents,” said Susan Komandosky, the chair of the museum’s advisory board, at the March 23 meeting of the City Council.
She suggested hoteloccupancy tax funds could be used.
“We have one who works on Saturdays for three hours,” she said. “We don’t have anyone to work on Sundays at this time, and that creates an issue because we have people who want to visit and we would like to be there more hours. We would like to have someone who could organize exhibits do the things that volunteers just flat don’t have the time to do.”
While city leaders made no mention whether they favored additional funding for a staff position, District 4 Councilman Robert Garcia expressed his appreciation for the volunteers’ efforts.
“Thanks for all you do, Susan,” he said. “You and the volunteers are greatly appreciated.”
Komandosky said the museum is getting requests for tours from all over, including Georgetown, Austin, Round Rock and beyond.
“In a normal year, the number of groups requesting tours is more than we can handle as far as volunteers, and so once again, we are asking that the City Council find in the budget to pay for at least a part-time curator, someone who could do inventory, who could do exhibits, to give tours, and to help us make Taylor’s treasure what it should be: an active part of the community,” Komandosky said.
“As one of my board members told me shortly after we finished decorating the museum for Christmas, she said, ‘You know, we are all nearly 100 years old,’” Komandosky added. “’It’s time we get some help.’ And so, she is pretty close to right, I am afraid.”
In the meantime, Komandosky said she and other volunteers are working to pay for a statue of Moody to be erected this fall to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the successful prosecution of the KKK.
“Dan Moody was (Williamson County) district attorney, and that trial was the first one to successfully prosecute klan members, not only in Texas, but anywhere in the nation,” she said. “And it pretty well put an end to a lot of the issues that people were having with the klan. And I know there has been some controversy over that from time to time, but the simple fact is that it was a case that he won, and it made a big difference in the world that we live in even now, and so that is an important part of what is going on this year.”
Komandosky said the Friends of the Museum have managed to secure a matching donor, and they will be selling bricks to raise additional funding.
“Hopefully we can get the community involved in the fundraising, so that they can feel like it’s theirs,” she said. “We have a statue of Bill Pickett (Taylor rodeo legend). We have a painting of Fred Kerley (Taylor Olympian). It’s time we recognized Taylor’s governor. We have only had one, and there are not a whole lot of small towns in Texas that can claim to ever have raised a governor.”
