Maureen Kelly Jonason, executive director of the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County, poses with Knut and Synneve, the human-sized trolls inside the entrance of the Hjemkomst Center. (Photo/Nancy Hanson.)

Exec director Maureen Kelly Jonason has shepherded HCSCC since its beginning

Nancy Edmonds Hanson

The stories of Clay County and Moorhead are deeply rooted in the distant past. But the organization that tells them at the Hjemkomst Center is only a teen-ager itself, steered since its founding 15 years ago by the steady hand of Maureen Kelly Jonason.
“I’ve always loved history, and I’ve fallen in love with Clay County,” the executive director reflects. “It’s very rewarding to help the historians on our staff do their work. They’re devoted to our mission.
“We have a blessing not every historical society shares: We can pay people to research and write fabulous exhibits while we continue to work on cataloging our collections.” That’s a luxury that few of Minnesota’s 87 hard-pressed county historical groups can afford.
The story begins in 1982, when Robert Asp built the replica of a Viking long ship that rests at the heart of the Hjemkomst Center. Underwritten by a community campaign, its new home – the striking tent-roofed building in downtown Moorhead – was owned and operated by the board of the Heritage Hjemkomst Interpretive Center. But early projections of 200,000 visitors a year quickly were proven wrong. Despite 187,000 in its inaugural year in the mid-1980s, the audience quickly diminished to a few tens of thousands
Meanwhile, the Clay County Historical Society became a tenant on the lower floors of the center, bringing its archives and its collection of historical artifacts. Its small staff researched, organized and staged a series of changing exhibitions on the county’s colorful past.
The HHIC foundered, its finances a perpetual problem. In 1998 the city of Moorhead bailed out the nonprofit by purchasing the building and retiring its debt. The HHIC continued to manage the ship, as well as the Hopperstad Stav Church replica builder Guy Paulson also gave to the city.
It took another 10 years for the HHIC and its neighbor, the county historical society, to join forces. Maureen was part of the task force that negotiated a merger of the two organizations in 2008.
“I’d been on the HHIC board and been involved in several projects,” Maureen remembers. “When the interim director left, I volunteered to manage the organization. That lasted for two weeks. Then I said, ‘Oh, no way! It’s too much work! You’re going to have to pay me.”
After the two groups merged into the Historical and Cultural Society in 2010, she took on the task of blending the two organizations – HHIC focused on the area’s culture, and CCHS on its history. Their joint mission became “to collect, preserve, interpret and share the history and culture of Clay County” … thus, the name: Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County.
The budget finally stabilized, helped in large part by substantial annual support given to the historical unit by the Clay County Commission. Along with the in-kind services provided by its landlord, the city, that left the newly merged HCSCC with just half of the annual budget of around $1 million to be raised from other sources.
According to Maureen, about 25% of the annual budget now comes from admissions, the gift shop and membership dues.
The balance must be raised anew each year in private donations and grants. “That’s my biggest responsibility as director,” Maureen says. “We’re fortunate to have private donors who have been truly generous with their gifts over the years.
And then there’s her favorite part of her job – seeking grants, most of them tagged to programming and special events. Happily, that’s her forte. “We submit proposals to the Lake Region Arts Council and Minnesota Historical Society in every grant round, usually four or five per year, along with every other source we can find,” she reports. That amounts to 20 or more applications in 12 months’ time.
Writing grants, she says, is one of her favorite parts of her job. No wonder: She regularly wins 85 to 90 percent of those she submits.
Now at the top of her game, the young Maureen never imagined winning grants or managing historical enterprises while she was growing up in Fargo and Harvey, North Dakota. Instead, she says, she wanted to be a writer. “I wrote my first novel when I was 12,” she confides.
But the path wasn’t clear. After graduating from Fargo North High School in 1978, she enrolled at NDSU, falling in love with every subject she was introduced to. Eventually she majored in English and and sociology with an emphasis on criminal justice. She went on to complete master’s and doctoral degrees.
She spent two years guiding busloads of sight-seeing senior citizens across 48 states and most Canadian provinces for SCR Tours. But teaching seemed inevitable. “The thought of teaching high school students terrified me,” she admits now, “but college didn’t seem so bad.” She joined the MSUM faculty in 1993, then moved to Concordia College in 2001, where she continued in the classroom until the HHIC opportunity emerged seven years later.
Along the way, she got tastes of history as well as drama. Maureen created and directed the Dakota Spirits for Bonanzaville USA during her summer breaks, putting together a corps of young people who researched day-to-day lives in the pioneer past, then portrayed those costumed characters on the historic village’s grounds.
She took a turn at drama herself, auditioning for a production of the F-M Community Theater. “I’d never acted before, but I tried out for ‘The Miracle Worker,’” she recounts. “To my surprise, I was cast as Annie Sullivan. I was pretty good.” Directing the familiar production was FMCT artistic director Marty Jonason.
That was 40 years ago. They were married two years later.
Today, the HCSCC’s leader is looking toward retirement at the end of July 2025. That will be exactly 17 years after Clay County’s history took over her professional life. She will look back on a once-troubled institution that has found its balance.
Maureen cites that financial stability as part of the legacy she hopes to leave behind – that, and the management approach that has led to a thriving organization staffed by top professional historians committed to telling Clay County’s countless stories.
“I hire good people,” the director says, “and then I get out of their way.”