The Naturalist Center, 1982. Payson D. Carter is one of the oldest doeents, a yuan in his eighties who comes in tivuc a week 

 to teach. He is holding a slab containing fossil ferns (Neuropteris and Alethopterisj. 



tifically-inclined volunteer. In general, these workers 

 are people who are interested in specimens and in shar- 

 ing their interest with others. At least one member of 

 the current staff, Donald Davis in Entomology, traces 

 his interest directly to volunteer work done when he 

 was in high school. 



Gus Van Beek, a specialist in Middle Eastern ar- 

 cheology, has been extremely successful in obtaining 

 volunteers to work at archeological sites. Reasoning that 

 others might like to help even if they were not on a 

 "dig," he put out a call for assistance over ten years 

 ago, and got a volunteer group that has gathered weekly 

 ever since to fit potsherds together. They met in one 

 closed exhibit hall, then another; then in the basement 

 of the west wing and finally in the east wing basement. 

 This is the longest continuously running program of 

 volunteer scientific work at the Museum, but some de- 

 partments have received as much as eight years of part- 

 time assistance from a constantly changing cast of vol- 

 unteers. In fiscal year 1983, 247 behind-the-scenes vol- 

 unteers contributed 59,043 hours of work. Annually 

 they receive a pat on the back as their principal reward, 

 plus a great deal of inner satisfaction. Volunteer work 



extends the efforts of the scientists and has become a 

 significant facet of Museum operations in some de- 

 partments. 



F'rom volunteers working in the collections, it is a 

 short step to retired scientists, or, more correctly, un- 

 paid scientists. Most retirees are from the staff or af- 

 filiated organizations, but retirees from the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture find a home in Botany or 

 Entomology, and occasionally scientists from further 

 afield come to the Museum for a year or more. Henry 

 Collins has been coming in to the Museum for sixty- 

 one years, as has T. Dale Stewart, if one counts the 

 time Stewart took off to go to medical school. Edward 

 Henderson has been coming in fifty-six years and G. A. 

 Cooper for fifty-five. 



At the other end of the scale are students. There are 

 students of all ages in the Museum. About twenty-five 

 each year are supported by the Smithsonian, ranging 

 from lowly midergraduates to distinguished Regents 

 Fellows. There are usually at least twice that many other 

 students and special visitors in the building who have 

 come to study the collections for a day or more. □ 



Others in the Building 



169 



