Beauchemin Museum Fundraiser

I didn’t grow up in Vacaville. I chose it.

We moved here in 2021, and somewhere along the way it stopped being the place we moved to and became home.

That makes me want to know it better.

The Vacaville Museum is one of the places doing the work of making sure we can.

It collects and preserves the photographs, objects, documents and stories that tell us who lived here, what they built, how the land was used, what businesses shaped the town, and how Vacaville became the community we live in today.

That work matters to me.

At my own house, I have a wall where I’ve framed pieces of my past: newspaper articles from my restaurant years in Florida, including one about the Soup Lady business I started after Hurricane Charley.

I didn’t save those things because I thought I was making history. I saved them because they were part of my story.

Twenty years later, I’m very glad I did.

That’s essentially what the Vacaville Museum does on a much larger scale. It saves our community’s story before pieces of it disappear.

And that takes more than good intentions. It takes people, space, preservation, exhibitions, education, programming, and money.

So I’m raising some.

I want the Vacaville Museum to have the resources to keep collecting our history, caring for what has already been entrusted to it, and making those stories accessible to the rest of us.

I also want it to be here for the next generation of Vacaville.

You don’t have to be from here to care about what came before you. And you don’t have to have generations of family here to have a stake in what happens next.

Vacaville is my home.

The Vacaville Museum is helping preserve its story.

I think that’s worth investing in.

And I hope you’ll help me.