The February 15th,2008 edition of the Lawrence Journal-World carried an article entitled "Watkins Director Dismissed" which details the dismissal of long-time director of the Watkins Community Museum of History, which is located where else, but Douglas County, Kansas.

The article states that, "The director of the Watkins Community Museum of History has been dismissed as part of a shake-up in the management of the struggling nonprofit.

In a short news release, the board of directors of the Douglas County Historical Society — which oversees Watkins — announced that Rebecca Phipps no longer was director of the museum.

When contacted Thursday, Phipps said she did not resign from the museum, but she declined to go into specifics about her departure.

“At this point, I don’t want to comment until I’ve had a chance to talk to an attorney,” Phipps said.

Phyllis Tiffany, chairwoman of the historical society’s board of directors, said there has been “a very clear trend downward in interest, membership, funding and our approach to membership and funding.”

She said the museum’s administrative structure needed to be reorganized to reverse that trend."

So in layman's terms, Phipps was fired. The fact that funding was listed as one of the reasons for her dismissal, is not surprising. The Freedom's Fraud website, which has been following the coverage of the Freedom's Frontier National Heritage Area, has long questioned the support of the public , based on the amount of financial contributions it has received.

The fact that Phipps would not comment without speaking to an attorney , makes this writer question the reasons for her dismissal.

Was it really over lack of revenue that the museum has been generating lately, or is there something that the Douglas County Historical Society is not telling us?

It is not a far fetched theory, to wonder if Phipps was dismissed for other reasons. Perhaps she did not agree with the way that the Douglas County Historical Society and Destination Management has been presenting the history of the Missouri / Kansas border area.

Additional information found in the February 15th, Lawrence Journal-World newspaper states that, "Phyllis Tiffany, chairwoman of the historical society’s board of directors, said there has been “a very clear trend downward in interest, membership, funding and our approach to membership and funding.”

She said the museum’s administrative structure needed to be reorganized to reverse that trend.

“There has been a tremendous awareness on the part of the board that a lot of changes had to be made, to join the 21st century, if you will,” she said. “A lot of reorganization needed to be taken care of.

“Rebecca Phipps has a lot of skills and so forth, but they didn’t seem to be compatible with what we’re trying to do,” Tiffany said.

Douglas County Administrator Craig Weinaug said he did not know the specifics behind the dismissal. But he said county commissioners had expressed concerns to the museum board of directors, which is an independent organization that receives about $135,000 in county funding on an annual basis. Weinaug said the county has challenged the group to find revenue sources other than tax dollars.

“Watkins has made several efforts to do that in the past, but their success has been somewhat limited,” Weinaug said. “The County Commission has expressed significant concern that they need to do a better job with that.”

Maybe the reasons for Phipps dismissal were financial after all. It is not a foregone conclusion to believe, al least based on the lack of financial support for Freedom's Frontier National Heritage Area, the Douglas County Historical Society along with Destination Management, a private entity that has taken the place of Lawrence Convention and Visitors Bureau is siphoning off funds from wherever they can get them, to qualify for the $10,000,000 that the federal government has promised the heritage area over a 15 year period.

Also no surprise is the fact that Destination Management Inc. is under the leadership of Judy Billings, who was the former director of the Lawrence Convention and Visitors Bureau.

According to the February 17th, 2008 issue of the Lawrence Journal-World newspaper:

"Change, even when it’s for the better, often is difficult. The changes that are occurring in the organization and leadership of Douglas County’s historical tourism efforts are bound to cause some hard feelings, but they have a strong chance, in the long run, of making this area’s wonderful history more accessible to visitors and a bigger draw for tourism.

At the center of the changes is the new Destination Management Inc., under the leadership of Judy Billings, the long-time director of the Lawrence Convention and Visitors Bureau. The first shifts took place several months ago when DMI formed and took over the operation of the visitor’s bureau from the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce. At the same time, DMI formalized its leadership role with the Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area.

The goal of this transition was to put Lawrence and Billings at the center of developing the new heritage area and to coordinate that project with other historical tourism efforts in the county. Those pushing the reorganization said putting the heritage area management under the local chamber of commerce wouldn’t be acceptable to others involved in the project, which includes 41 counties in Kansas and Missouri."

Which proves what the I have been writing about on the Freedom's Fraud website for quite sometime; the fact that a national heritage area that was created and passed in congress , spearheaded by Republican Senators Sam Brownback and Jim Talent, is based out of and centered in Lawrence, Kansas.

With the creation of this heritage area comes many questions regarding property rights and how the controversial history of the Missouri / Kansas border area will be presented.

The fact that the Freedom's Frontier National Heritage Area is based out of Lawrence , Kansas , makes it very questionable that the area's Civil War history will be presented in an objective , or even accurate manner and you can bet that the with the Freedom's Frontier National Heritage Area headquartered in Lawrence, the true history of Missouri will not be told.