One of my enduring and happy memories of Laurie is working with her for a number of years on the living history portion of the Plantation Christmas event at George Mason’s Gunston Hall. For the two months leading up to this public program, a group of had regular planning meetings, sometimes at Panera’s, for breakfast; Gunston Hall was my regular job as the education coordinator but Laurie had to fit in meetings before her paying work. There were daily phone calls on some aspect of the Christmas program – about a volunteer who needed historic clothing, someone who was displeased about her/role, the gathering of props, and so on. Throughout the time-consuming event coordination, Laurie maintained her resolve to keep the living history as accurate as possible to the 18th-century time period, while working through inevitable changes with flexibility and a sense of humor.
On the evenings of Plantation Christmas, Laurie always was stationed in character at the front door of the mansion, with me below the front porch the line of guests to flow into the house for the living history experience. Sometimes Laurie was portraying the take-no-prisoners Gunston Hall housekeeper Abigail Fletcher or a 18th-century gentry partygoer taking her leave on the front porch and gossiping about Mason’s family and friends inside. Whatever the personage Laurie portrayed, we always had a lively running dialogue between us, with Laurie as Mrs. Fletcher or whoever welcoming modern-day visitors into the house.“We don’t want these guests waiting outside, Mrs. McHugh,” Mrs. Fletcher would scold me loudly.“By all means, let us have them enter.”
This small anecdote captures well Laurie’s magnificent skills in living history – her dedication to the history being related, her ease in working with a group to tell a story about the past, and her ability to create magic when portraying a character from long ago.
