Local museum experiences successful Memorial Day weekend, but still needs major donations
POCOMOKE, Md. – Memorial day weekend was forecasted to be dreary and rainy, but for places like Delmarva Discovery Museum, rainy days bring in business.
Which is something they say is desperately needed. “Today is so exciting for us, we love rainy days and to have the museum this full, it’s been a year and a half since we’ve seen this and all of us are just on cloud nine,” says Christy Gordon, Chief of Operations at the Delmarva Discovery Museum.
Saturday was filled with tours, otter shows and a rare crab exhibit. The museum recently introduced a bilateral gynandromorph crab, basically a crab that’s half female, half male. Although the crab is attracting more audiences, the museum say they still needs visitors and donations. “Just to have a schedule again and know that we can make plans and people are going to not be afraid to come we’re ready for that,” says Gordon. She adds, “Everybody has held on strong and put in a lot of time and effort and we just want to keep it here, it means a lot to everybody.” With guidelines and restrictions lifted, the museum says they feel like they’re trying to make up for lost time. “Right now we’re just kind of winging it, we’re not sure how many people are coming in each day,” says Gordon.
A board member with the Delmarva Discovery Museum also tells us, while funding from some organizations helped, they’re really hoping that they’ll start to see the money again as visitors begin to come back. “You know there’s so many organizations that are going through the same thing, it’s kind of hard to spread that money around,” says a board member for the Delmarva Discovery Museum, William Ferguson. Gordon adds, “The thought that we maybe weren’t going to be able to make it was scary and very sad, there’s so much history here.”
However, we’re told after their six month closure, the museum was lucky to still be open. Now they say their focus is on getting back to a sense of normalcy. “Hopefully we’re getting to the point where we’re fully staffed the way we should, but that all comes with money. You gotta’ have money to keep that going and that’s what we’re trying to accomplish right now,” says Ferguson.
If you’re interested in donating to the museum, you can visit their location in Pocomoke or go to their website. The museum is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
