Garst Museum will continue its 2024-25 Lecture Series on October 5, 2024, with journalist and Annie Oakley historian Shirl Kasper, MA, Ph.D. The event will be held in the Lowell Thomas Meeting Room at Garst Museum at 2 p.m. The lecture is free, and all are welcome. Regular admission fees apply to tour the museum.
Kasper began researching Annie Oakley in the early 1980s. Her findings led to the 1992 publication of the biography Annie Oakley. A former feature writer for The Kansas City Star, Kasper joined the National Park Service and worked as a historian on numerous projects.
After retiring, Kasper re-visited Annie Oakley. The original biography focused on a detailed reading of Oakley’s eight scrapbooks. With today’s internet resources, she was able to unearth primary materials that were all but impossible to find in the 1980s. Utilizing these sources, she has written a new afterword to the original book, which was reprinted and published in 2023. This afterword sheds additional light on the lives of Oakley and her husband, Frank Butler.
On October 5, she will share some of her discoveries featuring Oakley’s and Butler’s early lives, which place Annie on the stage earlier than previously thought. Kasper also documents Frank’s first marriage and the beginnings of Frank’s career in Camden, New Jersey.
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