New to Memphis in 1999, Karen Kilgore Ralston ’69 felt uprooted. She and husband Jim had lived for 30 years in Cincinnati, where he worked as a corporate general counsel. But when Jim’s company changed hands, the couple relocated for his new job. To shake off her gloom, Ralston checked out the Woodruff-Fontaine House, a preserved Victorian mansion and museum in the city’s historic Millionaires’ Row. A self-taught historian of vintage and Victorian clothing, with a library of books on the subject and her own extensive collection of garments at home, Ralston wandered the three-floor house museum with pleasure. Then she spotted the ribbon. It was all wrong − a modern anachronism on an old blouse. “I opened my mouth and said, ‘Ooh, that ribbon is not correct,’ ” she recalled with a laugh. She soon started volunteering at the museum. There, she fixed that little ribbon– and took a big step toward banishing her discontent. Today Ralston is Woodruff-Fontaine’s volunteer … [Read more...]