New museum director eager to tell Lincoln Highway stories

May 1—When Kim Cady visits a museum, her fascination isn't just with the objects themselves — it's with the stories they tell and what those stories reveal about society as a whole.

She's looking forward to telling more of those stories as the new executive director of the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor and its Lincoln Highway Experience museum in Unity.

Cady joined the LHHC on March 20, coming from a position as associate curator of the Car and Carriage Museum at The Frick Pittsburgh in Point Breeze. She oversees one full-time staff member, four part-timers and about 20 volunteers.

As a weekend driver along Route 30, she already was familiar with the museum.

"One of the things I do for fun is get in my car on Saturday or Sunday morning, turn my radio on and drive from Turtle Creek, where I live, to Idlewild," Cady said. "Then I make a U-turn and go home.

"I wouldn't stop, I wouldn't shop, I'd just go for a drive and clear my thoughts out," she said. "I would pass the Lincoln Highway Experience, but it was always closed when I was coming by."

Cady said she wasn't looking to leave The Frick, where she had been since fall 2016, but was intrigued when an ad for the position came up in an online news feed.

"Cars and transportation are a thing that is relatable to everyone," she said. "This is an area where people can relate, and if they can relate on one level, then I can bring in layers that enrich their experience by bringing in the social contexts.

"That's kind of what brought me here, to go from just cars to the whole highway," she said. "Roadways and transportation change everything in this time frame."

Pivotal time

Cady comes to the organization at a pivotal time in its development, said LHHC board Vice President Kristin Ecker of Greensburg.

Founded in 1995, the nonprofit organization works with other nonprofit attractions and businesses to promote and preserve the 200-mile stretch of Route 30, originally known as the Lincoln Highway, from Abbottstown, York County, to Irwin.

Following the tenure of previous executive directors, Olga Herbert and Lauren Koker, Ecker said, "We were looking for someone to envision the future of the organization and the museum together."

"We're hoping to grow the programming and make the facility more robust, to increase the educational component and public awareness and to establish it as a key destination for recognizing the historical importance of the Lincoln Highway to the area," she said.

Cady's final project at The Frick was organizing the exhibition, "Pittsburgh and the Great Migration: Black Mobility and the Automobile," opening on Saturday. The exhibit looks at how the automobile facilitated the Great Migration of Black Americans from the South to the North between 1916 and 1945.

"One of the stories I wanted to tell was how the auto affected African American lives and specifically those in Pittsburgh," she said.

At The Frick, she also curated exhibitions of various carriages owned for different purposes by wealthy people, automobile hood ornaments and the role of the automobile in the women's suffrage movement — the last a topic of special interest, as she is a descendant of the early women's rights activist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

"I'd like to do a similar Great Migration-Green Book story for the Lincoln Highway," Cady said. "I would love to see if there were any Green Book stops along Route 30 — or if there weren't, that is equally important. It tells you that a Black person traveling that route from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh had to prepare in a different way."

There are many stories to tell along the highway, she said, some that are specific to a local area and others that encompass its entire length.

"It's not just a history museum local to Latrobe, it's a history museum of a 200-mile corridor that brought in businesses that did not exist before the highway came through, brought in people who would not have traveled across the state without the highway," she said. "This highway is the impetus for the interstate highway system that President Eisenhower develops in the 1950s. It gives people the opportunity to live away from where they work, to travel places they wouldn't otherwise be able to get to."

Culture shock

A native of Elizabeth, N.J., Cady took a liking to Pennsylvania as a child visiting relatives in Potter County. She liked it so much that she prevailed on her parents to stay with those relatives during her high school years.

There was some culture shock involved in going from what would have been a graduating class of 1,200 to one of 56 at Northern Potter High School, she said, but it was worth it.

"There was a rat-race, dog-eat-dog mentality that I had picked up even as a junior high student," she said. "I loved the quiet, the friendliness, of Potter County. I would go for walks to nowhere and it was delightful."

Cady, 45, earned a liberal studies degree from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania, with minors in history and art history, with the thought of working in the museum field. She later earned a master's degree from the University of Oklahoma focused on museum exhibitions and administration.

She worked at a small historical museum in Athens, Bradford County, and at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, N.Y., before being hired as curator of the Pennsylvania State Police Historical, Educational and Memorial Center in Hershey.

The bulk of her work there was to create a secure, climate-controlled storage system and database for archival items. She also curated a "Horseback to Horsepower" exhibit, chronicling the move of patrol units from four hooves to four wheels.

"That exhibition is what caught the eye of The Frick," she said.

With the Lincoln Highway, Cady said, she would like to expand the women's history section, add more stories from more diverse populations and create more events in which people can "do something fun and accidentally learn something while they're doing it."

She's imagining a "Pilsners and Packards" show, combining vintage automobiles with Western Pennsylvania's long beer-brewing history.

"Kim has a robust history with travel and transportation and working with nonprofits and museums," Ecker said. "She has a wealth of knowledge and really hit the ground running.

"We know 1,000% that we made the right decision and are excited to see the impact she'll have on the organization."

Shirley McMarlin is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Shirley by email at smcmarlin@triblive.com or via Twitter .