SB Museum of Natural History Presents 15th Annual Legacy Awards - Honoring Kathy & Bob Harbaugh, Toni & Terry McQueen, Don Morris, and Ken Tatro
The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History hosted its Leadership Circles of Giving Dinner on Thursday, January 18 in Fleischmann Auditorium. The annual event recognized the generosity of Leadership Circles Members and key donors who helped sustain the Museum and Sea Center’s work during the past year.
The Museum’s Legacy Awards acknowledge extraordinary contributions to the Museum and the natural world by community supporters, donors, and volunteers. This year Kathy and Bob Harbaugh, Toni and Terry McQueen, Don Morris, and Ken Tatro were honored for their generosity and dedication to the Museum. All six of this year’s honorees are volunteers.
Kathy Harbaugh became a Museum docent in 1983, eventually joining the Museum’s staff to manage the entire docent and school field trip program. After retiring in 2015, she became a docent again, continuing to educate children at the Museum today. Bob Harbaugh has volunteered across Museum departments, from organizing multi-day field trips for the Museum community to helping identify and collect data on mineral research specimens.
Toni and Terry McQueen are critical volunteers for the Santa Barbara Wine + Food Festival®, one of the Museum’s most important fundraisers of the year. Throughout the year, they generously give many hours tending the Sukinanik’oy Garden of Chumash Plants, a living exhibit with important educational and cultural applications.
As the first park archaeologist for Channel Islands National Park, Don Morris has a long and deep association with the Museum. Now retired, Morris continues to share his rare technical skills and peerless knowledge of local prehistory with the Museum and the wider scientific community.
Ken Tatro has given thousands of hours of his time and care interpreting marine exhibits to Sea Center guests. Tatro started volunteering at the Sea Center in 2006 and has served a weekly shift ever since, interrupted only by a pandemic and the occasional vacation.
Receiving his award, Tatro humbly remarked, “I’m just having fun. I go to the Sea Center, and I learn more and more about the oceans. And then I get to turn right around and share that with the public. Not only the public right here in Santa Barbara . . . people from all over the world.” He described what a pleasure it is to work among other volunteers, who are inherently giving people, and pointed out the entire Museum community as “an educational organization, a research organization; inherent to what we’re doing, all of us, is giving.”
Leadership Circles Members play a critical role in supporting all facets of the Museum and Sea Center’s work, including education, research, exhibits, collections, and accessibility initiatives. Visit sbnature.org/leadership-circles for more information. To explore the Museum and Sea Center’s many volunteer opportunities, visit sbnature.org/volunteer.
The dinner was catered by Events by Rincon and wine provided by Pali Wine Co.
