Good Business Ties Pay Off--Again--for Children’s Museum

The Children’s Museum at La Habra--the first of its kind in the state--is used to winning awards and receiving grants, but Director Catherine M. Michaels is nonetheless pleased to accept $1,500 from the Orange County Business Committee for the Arts as 1988 winner of the Business in the Arts Award.

The cash grant, underwritten by Marsh & McLennan Inc., will probably go toward the museum’s $500,000 expansion project, said Michaels.

Each year, the committee recognizes companies for their involvement with arts in local communities. In addition, the group selects one Orange County-based, not-for-profit arts organization that has demonstrated outstanding leadership in formulating business partnerships. On Sunday night, the La Habra museum received this year’s award at a ceremony at the Newport Harbor Art Museum.

Award or not, it was business as usual last week for Michaels at the converted Union Pacific Train Depot and adjoining red caboose. As 15 kindergartners from the Edgewood Private School in Santa Ana were guided through the small, well-designed facility, Michaels explained that the museum’s on-going success was due in large part to support from the local community and business organizations.

“We pay for very little if we can help it,” said Michaels, museum director for 9 years.

In addition to in-kind donations of about $200,000 annually, she said, it takes another $200,000 in cash to operate the museum. Admissions ($1 for children; $1 for seniors, and $1.50 for adults) bring in only a fraction of that. Ground will be broken soon, she said, for the museum’s much-needed, 8,000-square-foot addition.

As Michaels spoke, the Edgewood students were being guided through the depot by docent Tina Minner of La Habra, who has been leading tours 2 days a week for the last year.

The tour began with a short talk at the Nature Walk in the depot’s front room that is filled with taxidermied wild animals, most begging to be petted by little hands. Four at a time, the children ducked into the Bee Observatory to watch the hive community behind glass make honey and little bees.

From there, the well-behaved group filed through the middle room, with its Model Train Village and Fascination Station, the large layout designed and maintained by the Toy Train Operating Society.

In the third room, called “Playspace,” where exhibits change every few months, exuberance is encouraged. The current exhibition, which runs through Feb. 18, is “Under the Big Top,” and it didn’t take long for the youngsters to get into the circus spirit. The children were encouraged to explore, shed their blue uniform sweaters and dress up in the costumes of their choice, have their faces painted and simply play circus. After a tour of the 1917 caboose on the tracks outside the depot, it was time for lunch in the park behind the museum.