This morning in the Sentinel Record I saw an announcement saying there would be a Park Service presentation at Gulpha Gorge called "A Day in the Life of a 1915 Bath House Attendant." It was a pretty night and I am a big Hot Springs history nerd so I decided to go. It was held in that outdoor amphitheater next to Gulpha Creek and started at 8:30, just before dusk. The park officer presenting was a woman in her 30s, African-American, very pretty and short, and wearing a replica of an old-style bath attendant uniform. As I sat down she was chatting with some other attendees--there were 12-15 or so of us--and I thought for a moment that she was in character, that she was in fact going to be acting the part of this woman from 1915.

It was instead a PowerPoint presentation, and not a bad one: she knew her subject thoroughly and didn't use the slideshow as a crutch. We could tell she was nervous but she laughed even at her minor flubs and was charming and funny and obviously enthused by her subject. It turns out---so I learned from the question-answer session afterward--all the park service officers were doing "life histories" and because her great aunt had worked in a bath house, she decided to do a life history of a bath attendant. After researching census records and archive documents---and with the help of her sister, a genealogist, the officer pieced together the life story of this woman named Kate who worked in the Hot Springs bathhouses starting in 1915. Though terrified of graveyards, she got her sister to walk with her through the black section of Greenwood cemetery until they found Kate's grave, cleaned it and stood above her, this woman she felt like she already knew. I knew how she felt because that's how it was when my student Alex and I found Old Mike's grave, a story to come later.

The best part: near the end of the Park Service officer's presentation she was talking about how the baths were segregated in those days--well until the time when her great aunt worked in the bath house. So her great aunt could work there, but could not herself purchase a bath. "Makes me kind of proud, now," she said with a grin, "to carry around the keys to that same bath house--and all the others on the row!"