Jacqueline and Ed Helm
sponsored a reception at their home that raised $2,500 for Project Baobab, a program started last year by public school educators to teach African history and organize a student trip to Ghana (www.projectbaobab.95mb.com). Project Baobab also planned a silent auction gala for Sunday, June 5, at Harrah's Casino, which donated the use of the Earl Turner Theatre to the group.
James Barksdale,
the former Netscape chief executive officer and a member of the National D-Day Museum's Board of Trustees, has given the museum its largest gift to date. Barksdale donated $5 million to the museum's $282 million expansion campaign, which plans to quadruple the size of the museum over the next five years. More than 1.5 million people have visited the National D-Day Museum since its opening on June 6, 2000.
The Historic New Orleans Collection
was named one of the three grand-prize winners of the History Channel's Save Our History Awards, a national
competition recognizing excellence in historical preservation and education. THNOC won the Community Award for its exhibit A Dollop of History: An Oral History Project to Preserve the Culinary Heritage of the New Orleans Community. The acclaimed project will be on permanent display at THNOC.
School Board President Torin Sanders
ignored his obligations to Orleans Parish public-school children and employees last week when he refused to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the state to hire a private firm to manage the system's financial morass. Sanders' unwillingness to abide by the board's majority-vote decision creates potentially harmful delays in the contract process, and amounts to a self-serving political stunt and a dereliction of his duties.
