This is the second in a series of three articles about Stillwater High School's 2008 Distinguished Alumni. Jack Thoreen, Anne Knoche and Brent Peterson - winners of the 2008 Stillwater Area High School Distinguished Alumni Award -will be honored at a reception for friends and family at 3 p.m., Saturday, May 31, in the high school library.

Brent Peterson

Class of 1982

For Brent Peterson, it's always about the stories. His fascination with history started at home where his parents and grandparents told family stories. He listened, and his fascination with the stories led to a successful career as a local historian and Executive Director of the Washington County Historical Society (WCHS).

"It's not the dusty books, it's not the old newspapers, it's the preservation of the stories," Peterson observed.

Gesturing around the WCHS office in the Warden's Carriage House, he went on to say, "I get a lot of genealogists up here. They have to find out the birth date, the marriage date, the baptismal date - the facts. And then, when they get all those facts, they're done. And, I say they haven't even started yet."

Peterson's parents, Roger and Darlene Peterson, told stories about going to Stillwater High School in the 1950s and what it was like during the 1965 flood and his dad's service on the City Council. An uncle told World War II prisoner of war stories and his grandfather told World War I stories: "My grandmother would come out on the porch and say 'Oh, nobody wants to hear those old war stories.' But, I did."

What began at home, continued in school: "When you're a kid, stories are great, but then you just want to go out and play. When you're in school, teachers have to nurture it." Among the teachers Peterson credits with encouraging him along the way are Ruth, Pierce, Bernie Anderson and Jane Dickinson in elementary school, Leonard Lindgren in junior high, and Mr. Timm, Brian Croone and Mr. Lien in high school.

Peterson graduated from Mankato State University with bachelor's degrees in history and law enforcement and went through "police academy" at the Law Enforcement Training Center. It's not a long stretch to connect the two disciplines, considering that his great grandfather Jensen was police chief in Stillwater for 25 years and served in that capacity during Prohibition.

"I never got to meet him," Peterson said, "but I can just imagine the stories he would have told."

After college, Peterson's first "real job" was with the Minnesota Historical Society working as site interpreter at the state Capitol. He held the part-time position for five years, and, at the same time, worked for St. Croix County Historical Society as co-director and caretaker of the Octagon House.

Peterson makes it a point to connect with people in his profession. He considers himself fortunate to have known local historian James Taylor Dunn, librarian Sue Collins, whose domain was the Stillwater Library's Minnesota Room, and Hank Sampson, who did a Heritage series on local radio.

During his stint at the Octagon House, Peterson met Willis Miller, who is now publisher emeritus of the Hudson Star Observer and "still going strong at 89." Miller started working at the newspaper in 1940 and founded the St. Croix County Historical Society in 1947.

"When the Warden's House in Stillwater opened as a museum in 1941, (Miller) got here from Hudson on his bicycle to cover the opening," Peterson notes with a smile.

Through the years, Peterson has found that lives and events often are connected: "It always comes back to the stories, and what I find fascinating is that these stories are so intertwined. You might think that the lumber barons and the little shoeshine boy down on the street...that their lives will never intertwine, but they do. Two, three generations later, it all comes together."

A lot of people consult the WCHS archives to find, not only dates, but those connections. Researchers sometimes find relatives they didn't know they had or friends of relatives, and Peterson enjoys their successes, but adds that he's "been on both ends of it." Occasionally, a family myth doesn't quite match up with reality as happened in the following instance.

Two older couples walked in to the WCHS office feeling quite proud. They had just toured the Warden's House and said their great-great grandfather was a warden of the prison and lived in that house back in the 1860s. "Great!" Peterson said and proceeded to check the files on all 13 wardens of the old Stillwater Prison, but their ancestor wasn't one of them. He then suggested their relative might have been an assistant or deputy warden, and the couples agreed that must be the case. No luck here either, and a search of all prison employee lists came up empty as well.

Peterson eventually did find their relative's name on the only list left to check. Their ancestor had been at Stillwater Prison during the 1860s - he was in for petty theft. As often happens, the story got embellished over the years, and the ancestor changed sides.

"While they were here, their relative was a convict, but the minute they left, he went back to being the warden," Peterson said with a wry smile.

In 1992, Peterson was hired as a "very part time" assistant director at WCHS where he had previously volunteered, and for a while he juggled three jobs, Eventually, he became the research director at WCHS and gave up the other jobs. In 2001, Peterson became the first WCHS Executive Director and set about organizing collections at the Warden's House and Carriage House, Hay Lake School and Erickson Log House, entering the items on computer to create comprehensive catalog.

Under Peterson's leadership, WCHS has become, according to the Minnesota Historical Society, the only historical society in Minnesota in a "growing mode." Growth means change and change isn't always easy. Since he became Executive Director, Peterson has faced the loss of funding from Washington County, which had accounted for more that 50 percent of the WCHS budget. At the same time, the WCHS Board of Directors underwent significant change. It was a difficult time, but as new people joined the Board, they brought new ideas and new energy into the organization.

"We learned how to write grants, and one thing I learned very quickly is that the St. Croix Valley is very lucky to have the Margaret Rivers Foundation, the Andersen Foundations, the Tozer Foundation," Peterson commented. The wealth of the lumbering era is still here and continues to do enormous good in the St. Croix Valley.

About the many positive changes that have taken place since he assumed leadership, Peterson says: "It takes more than one person. It takes a board that's supportive, it takes a good membership base, which we have grown, and a supportive foundation community that has helped us because we have shown them our vision for the future."

Today, in addition to the executive director, WCHS employs another full-time person and a part-time person and grant money makes it possible to hire three interns. In addition, Peterson has developed and nurtured a close working relationship with the Minnesota Historical Society, which is widely recognized as one of the best in the country.

Peterson's accomplishments include establishing Valley History Press to publish and re-publish books about St. Croix Valley history. He is the author of several books about Stillwater history, writes a weekly history column and regularly submits articles and photographs to local newspapers.

Peterson has a special fondness for regional baseball history and is the founder of St. Croix Base Ball Club. The team competes regionally and performs during Lumberjack Days, playing "a gentlemen's game" in costume and according to the rules of the early days of baseball. He is a member of the Society of American Baseball Researchers and has served on the Board of Directors of the SABR Halsey Hall Chapter.

In 2005, WCHS wrote a strategic plan and, Peterson observed, "Everything we talked about in those strategic planning sessions came back to facilities. Do we want to do more programs? Of course we do. Well, where? We have two houses and a school. Where are you going to put a streetcar exhibit? How are we going to show off our beautiful birch bark canoe? You don't put that in the living room. Success breeds a whole new set of problems, but we have an exciting plan for the future with a new facility."

WCHS Board members and staff are working with a consultant on pre-campaign planning to determine how much a building will cost, what's it going to look like, where is it going to be. In Washington County, the future of the past looks promising.

"One of the things I've learned is that an historical society collects the past, but we collect it for the future. We have an infinite number of possible collections because history is made every day. We don't have a 10-, 15- or 20-year plan with our collections - it's a forever plan. We look toward the future more than most people do even though we collect the past.

Peterson brings his knowledge and skills to countless volunteer activities. The list includes: member of Stillwater Historic Preservation Commission for 12 years; member of Arcola Mills first Board of Directors; member of Historic Courthouse Advisory Board for eight years; Trustee of Fairview Cemetery Association for 10 years.

Peterson remembers, at an early age, hearing a pastor talk about the dash. The pastor observed that when you walk in a cemetery and look at the stones, there's the birth year, the death year and there's the dash. It's all about the dash, the pastor concluded. And the stories - always the stories.