Banning Centennial Celebration Kicks Off Lecture Series

The following was submitted by the Banning Centennial Committee:

A monthly lecture series, part of a year-long celebration of Banning’s centennial, will begin Saturday, February 9 at 6 p.m. with a dinner followed by a lecture at 7 p.m.  at the Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, Gathering Hall, 127 N San Gorgonio Avenue, Banning.  

Dr. Patty Nelson Limerick, featured lecturer, will speak on “Beginning with Banning: From Conquest to Civil Rights, from Stagecoaches to VW Bugs, from the Old West to the New Western History.”  

Dr. Limerick says: “Since I do want to tell some stories from my own childhood, I figure that “Beginning with Banning” carries an empowering double message of beginning with Phineas and his story, and my own beginnings in Banning (and the VW Bug was a central feature of those beginnings!).”

Dr. Limerick is the faculty director and chair of the Board of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado, where she is also a Professor of History. Limerick has dedicated her career to bridging the gap between academics and the general public and to demonstrating the benefits of applying historical perspective to contemporary dilemmas and conflicts.

Limerick was born and raised in Banning, California and graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1972. She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1980, and from 1980 to 1984, she was an Assistant Professor of History at Harvard. In 1984, Limerick moved to Boulder to join the History Department of the University of Colorado, where she was promoted to tenured Associate Professor in 1987 and to Full Professor in 1991. In 1985 she published Desert Passages, followed in 1987 by her best-known work, “The Legacy of Conquest,” an overview and reinterpretation of Western American history that has stirred up a great deal of both academic and public debate.

Tickets for the event are $25 per person and are available at the Banning Community Center, 789 N. San Gorgonio Avenue, Banning or through the Banning Centennial website at www. Banning100Birthday.com.

Tickets purchased on-line may be picked up at ”will call” at the event.  

The presenting sponsor for this centennial event is The Valley Messenger.

The Banning Centennial commemorates the 100th birthday of the City of Banning, located in the San Gorgonio Pass, California.

The celebration will take place throughout 2013.

For more information, access the Banning Centennial website at: www.Banning100Birthday.com Or call (951) 922-0856