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SANDY SPRINGS CHRISTIAN CHURCH
TOURS AVAILABLE
404-252-3950
“A preparatory preschool
providing preschool age children an
environment of warmth and
acceptance to grow socially and
academically within the framework
of Judeo Christian principles.”
301 Johnson Ferry Road
Comer of Abernathy & Johnson Ferry Road
thedayschool-sscc.org
Galloway students confidently embrace
challenges while developing the knowledge,
skills, and cultural competence to thrive as
enlightened contributors in their
chosen pathways.
Schedule your family’s tour at gallowayschool.org/visit!
Dunwoody Preservation
Trust offers adult history
education for free
History is the glue that holds
us all together. Yet, when it’s pre
sented as lists of mere names,
facts and dates in a textbook, it
can seem lifeless and meaning
less, even to curious adults. The
Dunwoody Preservation Trust
(DPT) is committed to deliv
ering history in ways textbooks
can’t.
Though DPT got its start re
storing and preserving historic
properties, including the histor
ic ca. 1870 Donaldson-Bannister
Farm, it has become increasingly
focused on education.
By now many people know about Camp
Flashback, the only summer history camp for
kids in our immediate area. For five one-week
sessions, campers leave their cell phones at
home and live like 1870s farm kids — making
cheese, milking goats, feeding chickens and
running free through former horse pastures.
Camp Flashback registration normally opens
in January. It’s so popular that all five sessions
usually sell out by the end
of February.
Less well known is
DPT’s Saturday morn
ing adult education series
called History Alive. Held
every other odd month
from 9:30 to 11:00 am at
the Donaldson-Bannister
Farm, History Alive began
in 2013 when then DPT
Co-President Monica Mc-
Gurk formed a committee
to figure out how to make
historic preservation more
relevant to the community.
“We asked ourselves,
‘How do we bring histo
ry to life to make the DPT
mission more accessible and relevant,”’ said
McGurk recently from her home in Chicago.
The result was History Alive. Though it
started small, with a few sporadically sched
uled events and lectures at various locations
throughout Dunwoody and Sandy Springs,
it was never boring. I attended a particular
ly memorable performance of sacred shape-
note singing at the tiny 1829-1880 Ebenezer
Primitive Baptist Church at the intersection
of Roberts, Spalding and Dunwoody Club
drives.
Once popular throughout early rural
America, shape-note singing, in which the
printed notes are drawn in various shapes to
indicate their sound, eventually became as
sociated mainly with the rural South. By
the mid-nineteenth century it became more
widely known as Sacred Harp singing, based
on “The Sacred Harp” songbook of 1844. In
the 1960s, Sacred Harp singing had a reviv
al. If you’ve seen the movie “Cold Mountain,”
you’ve heard Sacred Harp singing.
That experience exemplifies
the concept of History Alive. If
you try merely to read about Sa
cred Harp singing, you’ll never
get it. Of course, there are now
plenty of YouTube video exam
ples. But there’s no substitute for
being there — and there we were
in that tiny historic church listen
ing to a joyous A cappella sound
from the past, with harmonies
so bright and strange I will nev
er forget them. Without History
Alive, I would have never heard
of shape-notes or Sacred Harp
singing and would have contin
ued to pass by the historic Ebenezer Primitive
Baptist Church and Cemetery, now listed by
DPT as a “Major Dunwoody Monument,”
without ever entering.
But this is the point of History Alive. Now
very organized under the leadership of DPT’s
Director of Educational Programming Dr.
Jim Walker, a lifelong educator, History Alive
includes both events and presentations, some
of which are by people who lived the history
they’re discussing.
Though most of the events and presenta
tions involve Georgia, not all do. One such
presentation I particularly enjoyed was “Fight
ing Fascism with Film,” by John Thomas, an
American history professor at Mercer Univer
sity. Using clips from 1940s movies and doc
umentaries, he demonstrated how a then-pa
triotic Hollywood changed the minds of the
American public toward supporting the US
effort during World War II.
The next presentation is Sept. 17, “His
tory and the Holocaust,” with Marist history
teacher and scholar Brendan Murphy. Having
taken his full adult course, I highly recom
mend attending.
Visit dunwoodypreservationtrust.org/his-
tory-alive/ for more info. Admission is free,
though donations are welcome. The Donald
son-Bannister Farm is located at 4831 Cham-
blee Dunwoody Road in Dunwoody.
WORTH
KNOWING
BY CAROL NIEMI
40 SEPTEMBER 2022 | REPORTER NEWSPAPERS
reporternewspapers.com
