The Riley Boyhood Museum, next to the Hoosier Poet’s childhood home on Main Street in Greenfield, is the repository for the collection of Riley-era artifacts.
Daily Reporter file photo
GREENFIELD — Volunteers with a nonprofit organization left a visit to a large artifact collection without letting a city employee ensure no items were removed, according to a report made to police.
It’s the latest development in a dispute between the city and the Riley Old Home Society over items related to poet James Whitcomb Riley and his contemporaries.
While the nonprofit controls the collection, Greenfield’s parks department owns and operates the James Whitcomb Riley Boyhood Home and Museum, where the artifacts are stored.
The city wants to know what items are in the collection so they can be potentially used in programming and displays, but the nonprofit maintains it has the exclusive right to make decisions about the collection.
The nonprofit leases the second floor of the museum for $1 a year to store the collection, which it keeps behind a padlocked door. Amid the breakdown in relations between the two parties now going back over two years, the city served the nonprofit with notice that it’s expected to vacate the building by June 30. In the meantime, volunteers are able to access the building to get to the collection by giving prior notice and have been told not to remove any artifacts unless their ownership can be documented.
Last Friday, Stacey Poe, a city employee who coordinates the Riley museum, reported to the Greenfield Police Department that Riley Old Home Society volunteers David Crider, Nancy Alldredge and Joyce Benbow visited the storage space but left without allowing her to check their bags to ensure no artifacts had been removed.
According to the dispatch report, Poe was unsure if anything was removed because she does not have access to the storage room or record of what’s stored there.
“At this point, we don’t know if anything was taken at all,” said Chuck McMichael, GPD deputy chief and public information officer.
Poe deferred comment to Greenfield city attorney Gregg Morelock.
“It was our condition,” Morelock said of the city allowing the nonprofit’s volunteers to access the storage space as long as they gave prior notice and didn’t remove anything without documenting ownership. “We’re certainly not going to arrest anybody or have anybody arrested for taking things out, but we were hopeful they would understand why.”
Morelock noted the ad the nonprofit published in the Daily Reporter last year listing hundreds of artifacts it couldn’t verify the ownership of and asking people to come forward if they believed they owned any of them.
“So consequently, if they’re taking that out, then clearly that’s not appropriate,” he said.
Morelock added he’s told Greenfield Police Chief Brian Hartman that he doesn’t expect the GPD to arrest any of the nonprofit’s volunteers for not allowing Poe to ensure items aren’t taken without ownership documentation. He added Poe was instructed to tell police if it occurs.
“Once again it’s just a problem that we don’t get any cooperation on or even meeting us halfway,” Morelock said.
The Riley Old Home Society did not return requests for comment.
Morelock said the city’s primary concern remains what artifacts are in the collection and how to access them, and that he hopes some kind of resolution can eventually be reached.
“We’re just trying to put one foot in front of the other and hopefully get to some type of an agreement,” he said.
