An Incredible Donation from the Mennill Family!
March 6, 2025
We are thrilled to share the wonderful news that the Mennill family has made an extraordinary donation of $100,000 to our Relocation Fund. On behalf of our entire team, we extend our deepest gratitude to the Mennills, including Dave and Judy Mennill, who made this donation on behalf of their family and their parents.
Left to right: Dave Mennill, Judy Mennill, Office Manager Kathi Vandermeer, Director Mary Hamm, and Finance Chair Larry Jeffery. Image courtesy of Rob Perry and the Aylmer Express.
In recognition of their extraordinary generosity, we are proud to announce that our new downtown location will feature the Mennill Family Conference and Research Room. Designed to be a versatile, rentable venue, the room will host local groups and businesses, providing a welcoming space for meetings and community gatherings. It will also feature our extensive reference library of local history books, as well as access to our digitized database of artifacts and archival materials.
Dave and Judy Mennill have long been supporters of our museum and active members of our community. In addition to operating their tobacco farm, Judy was a much-beloved teacher at Assumption Catholic School, and Dave was a successful politician (being a Mayor of Malahide and a Warden of Elgin).
We were also extremely lucky to recently receive a collection of items formerly belonging to Joseph and Marjorie Mennill, Dave’s parents. As a navigator with the RCAF in WWII, Joe was captured by German forces and kept as a prisoner of war for 2.5 years. The Mennills kindly donated a collection of Joe Mennill’s wartime letters, including those he sent as a prisoner of war. We’re very excited to be able to preserve and document these records, to serve as a resource for our community for decades to come. The Mennills also gifted us the “Do Nothing Dress” (below), a sample of Marjorie Mennill’s extraordinary craftsmanship.
Phase one of the Relocation Project is already underway, and the Mennill family’s donation comes at a crucial juncture. After reviewing our draft Building Condition Assessment, the museum decided to ask our engineering firm if destructive testing may help us narrow down the extent of the renovations we expect to undertake. We met with representatives of the firm on February 25, 2025, and made plans to cut a series of 20 holes in the drywall throughout the building to assess its structural integrity. Afterwards, we should have a more informed cost estimate and game plan for the next stage of the project. Staff were able to finalize a desired floor plan for the building, and forwarded the plan to our architects for analysis.
The Mennill family’s unparalleled generosity has laid the foundation for both a bright future for our museum and a renewed commitment to our community’s heritage. Once again, we extend our heartfelt thanks. Their generosity will resonate for years to come, ensuring that our museum remains a vibrant center of learning, collaboration, and historical preservation. We look forward to sharing more updates as our project progresses and, one day soon, welcoming community members into the brand-new Mennill Family Conference and Research Room!
Portrait of Joe Mennill
German-issued Prisoner of War identification tag. The tag is stamped “OFLAG XXL B 86” on either side of a centre-serrated line. If the prisoner died, the tag would be broken in half; half would be kept with the prisoner’s body and half would be kept with their records. Thankfully, Joe Mennill returned home safe, with both halves.
The “Do Nothing Dress”
Image of Rita Mennill wearing the “Do Nothing Dress”
Marjorie Mennill smocked the above dress, which won her $100 in a contest hosted by the Toronto Star in April of 1953. Judy Mennill penned the following story about the dress:
We all recognized the value of the dress and the countless hours of time that Grandma Mennill had put into making it. So Rita’s mom set down some rules.
“Rita, when you wear that dress, I don’t want you to run around. Don’t eat or drink anything in that dress. Don’t play with glue, crayons or markers. Stay away from the cat and dog in that dress. Be careful not to get anything on that dress.”
Six year old Rita cooperated with all of the requests as she perceived that this was a very special dress, and, I knew she understood the message when she said to me, “Mom, shall I wear my ‘Do Nothing Dress’ today?”
And thus the very special dress, that won a prize in the Toronto Star contest, was named, and will be forever more ‘The Do Nothing Dress’.
Aylmer Area Community Foundation Board Member Dennis Boadway, Collections Manager Sarah Bentley, and Office Manager Kathi Vandermeer. Image courtesy of the Aylmer Area Community Foundation.
Theatre-goers and the action onstage
