Remarks By Ron Richmond at
House/Senate Reunion 2008
At the Historic Capitol
March 19, 2008

We are glad to welcome you here for most of you – your former home! On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Historic Capitol/Florida Legislative Research Center & Musuem (yes, we know it is long) we are pleased you have traveled back to visit with each other. We want you to consider this place your home in Tallahassee.

Since the move of the FLRC&M to the Historic Capitol in July of 2006, many improvements have been made to this old building. We have had two series of renovations to the basement. We invite you to tour this building and note the new show in our gallery in the basement rotunda, composites of House members dating back to 1947 on the House side and Senate group photos from 1968 – to the present on the Senate side .

We have also installed in the new Capitol a collection of historic photographs by Donn Dughi and Mark Foley – many of you are in them. We are working on a directory of those photos that will be available soon.

I would like to personally extend our thanks to our wonderful employees – who have worked tirelessly on this event - both today and tonight. They have decorated, tried to keep track of our comings and goings and generally provide this wonderful experience for us. Please join me in thanking Cissy DuBose, Iragene Gregory, Carol Wynn and our Historic Capitol experts – Jane Brightbill, Andy Edel and Carol Burlison. John Phelps our Curator of the Historic Capitol and Anne Mackenzie, Director of the FLRC&M are here with us too.

Enjoy this evening – enjoy each other. Please check your mailing addresses and help us find those former members who we have lost touch with. We are hoping to create a fundraising mechanism that will help us preserve the history of this building and the members who served in it. We will be in touch with the details – and we look forward to your support of our future endeavors. There is a lot of history in this room, and I am not just referring to the furniture. Please visit our website often for updated information we would like to share with you. Thank you for coming.

View a Slideshow of Photos from the Event