The Annual Awards of Excellence were presented to people and organizations throughout the state by the East Tennessee Historical Association on Saturday, May 31, 2025, at the East Tennessee History Center in Knoxville.

The Ramsey award, named for East Tennessee History Society founder Dr. J.G.M. Ramsey, is reserved for one individual annually, who, over the course of a lifetime, has made outstanding contributions to the understanding and preservation of East Tennessee history.

The Ramsey Lifetime Achievement Award was awarded to East Tennessee native Dan Pomeroy, retired director of collections and chief curator for the Tennessee State Museum. Originally from Kingsport, Pomeroy graduated from the University of Tennessee with a bachelor’s and a master’s in history.

Dan and my husband, Vince, have been best friends since the first grade in Kingsport. They continued that friendship while at UT where Vince was a humor columnist and Dan was a cartoonist for The Beacon where he illustrated Vince’s columns.

Dan Pomeroy: A bow-tied bridge between past and present

If you’ve ever wandered through a Tennessee museum exhibit and thought, “Someone clearly knew what they were doing,” there’s a good chance that someone was Dan Pomeroy. This year’s Ramsey Lifetime Achievement Award had an East Tennessee flavor.

If you’re imagining a man with a dusty notebook and an elbow-patched blazer, think again. Dan is the guy in the bow tie — always the bow tie — who’s quietly and methodically changed the face of Tennessee’s museums for half a century.

Dan’s museum career began in 1977 at the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville. Back then, the idea of a highly professionalized, nationally accredited museum system in Tennessee was far-fetched. By 1989, he was the museum’s director of collections and chief curator. This is a fancy way of saying, “he made sure our history didn’t look like your uncle’s attic.”

Under Dan’s leadership, the Tennessee State Museum earned its first accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums in 2004 and reaccreditation in 2020. That’s a major achievement in the museum world.

Dan didn’t just serve the museum in Nashville. He has helped shape how the entire state thinks about history through his work with the Tennessee Historical Society, the Tennessee Historical Commission, the Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission, and the Tennessee Association of Museums. He also found time to write and edit scholarly pieces on art and history.

Those of us with UT roots like to think of Dan as one of our own. He earned his degrees from UT. Though he went on to influence museums across all 95 counties, he never lost that East Tennessee perspective. His homegrown wit and his signature bow ties are his legacy and his brand.

What’s important is that it’s not just the past he’s protected; it’s the people who preserve it. Dan mentored a generation of museum professionals, many of whom are now scattered across the state. He’s also known for mentoring Boy Scouts, proving his passion for preservation applies to both artifacts and future leaders.

Dan Pomeroy has been doing the work, quietly, brilliantly and methodically for decades. His name belongs right up there with the institutions he’s helped build, one exhibit, one artifact, one young curator at a time.

So, congratulations Dan: the museum whisperer, the bow-tied Tennessean, and the UT alum who never stopped teaching us how to look backward with care so we can move forward with clarity.

Melanie Staten is a public relations consultant with her husband, Vince.

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