Frances Stebbins | Contributing writer
Frances Marshall McClung Ferguson, just starting as the new director of The Salem Museum, has one foot in the 21st Century age of technology and the other in decades of absorption in the city’s past. As she says with a laugh, “I’m Salem born and Salem bred, but I’m not dead yet.”
Far from it. At 58 with a full life behind her, Fran Ferguson looks forward to achieving several goals centered on the old/new building at 801 E. Main St.
“I want to grow our membership {in The Salem Historical Society}, attract some younger members, strengthen the museum as a community asset and give back to our city something of what it’s given me,” is the way she puts it.
Ferguson, who came from being director of development at downtown Roanoke’s Virginia Museum of Transportation since 2009, succeeds Dr. John Long. He left the faculty of Roanoke College 18 months ago to join the staff of the D-Day Memorial in Bedford County. In the interim Dr. Peggy Shifflett, retired Radford University professor and author of folklore books, has volunteered to keep things running smoothly.
Now that the search has been concluded, Ferguson is also getting an experienced assistant; he’s Alex Burke, a Roanoke College graduate who has interned at the museum and volunteered there on special occasions. He’ll be on hand full time including the hours the museum is open on Saturdays. From Tuesday to Saturday, a group of knowledgeable volunteers man the entrance desk. They represent a wide variety of Salem area residents with the roots of some going back several generations.
Ferguson is part of the McClung family, identified for more than 100 years with a lumber mill near the railroad and river. They are also faithful members of historic Salem Presbyterian Church where the worship center dates to pre-Civil War times.
One of three children – she has twin brothers, Tom and Lew – Fran McClung grew up in the Hanging Rock area and attended the old Academy Street and Broad Street schools before graduating from Andrew Lewis High School in 1976.
Initially drawn to math, she enrolled at Sweet Briar College and completed it Phi Beta Kappa in 1980. She has been active in its alumnae association and the recent efforts to redefine its purpose. “Then I did what a lot of math majors did. I got a job in Washington and worked in the Pentagon setting up essentially an e-mail system for the Marines.”
It was the early days of what was to become the computer revolution and Fran McClung got in on the ground floor. Having committed to the business world, she enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for a master’s degree in business administration with a concentration on marketing.
Then, now married to Norman Ferguson, it was back north where the couple lived in Baltimore. They started their family there with the birth of Robert in 1988 and Carol in 1990. Fran worked for four years for the CSX railway corporation before taking a break to mother her two children.
By 1994 the pull of the Salem mountains and family ties brought them back home. Fast-forwarding two decades, computers are still much a part of the Ferguson family life. Norman is on the staff of Virginia Tech working in its forest products connection. Robert is a museum educator in Charlotte, N.C., still single and very much enjoying his work, his mother relates.
Once back in the valley, with the children growing up, Fran soon became a busy volunteer. Getting to know Dan Smith, editor of the Blue Ridge Business Journal, her knowledge of technology and marketing led her into writing and the promotion of several local non-profit enterprises along with her involvement with her college and Salem Presbyterian Church where she is an elder and former Sunday school teacher.
Out of the latter connection, daughter Carol is the newest member to attend theological seminary and be ordained to Word and Sacrament. Recently she become the minister of Crescent Springs Presbyterian Church in the Cincinnati suburbs of Kentucky.
In 1997 Carol’s mother began working with Center in the Square as its marketing manager. Later she moved over to the Science Museum of Western Virginia and spent two years there before becoming a promoter of Blue Ridge Public Television.
As the director of development at the Virginia Museum of Transportation, she spent seven years in work involving speaking, writing, fund raising and general promotion throughout the commonwealth. Frances assisted with research, managed interns and edited a documentary film, “611: American Icon.” Now, it seems, she said, her life has come full circle.
