(ABC 6 News) – The History Center of Freeborn County will be featuring a new exhibit at the start of the new year as it wraps up the revamp it’s been working on since the pandemic, and it’s all to honor a small piece of Albert Lea’s history, while making history fun for kids.

If you were around Albert Lea before the year 2000, you probably know about one of the city’s famous residents.

Norma Robson, A.K.A. “The Story Lady”, collected hundreds of dolls over the years, using them to tell stories to groups of kids and adults across the area.

When she retired in the mid-1990’s, however, the dolls need a place to stay.

So began The Story Lady Doll & Toy Museum.

“I was actually involved with it before I ever moved back here,” says Karen Callahan, former director of the museum. “I knew about and I was really happy about because I collected dolls at the time in California. When I moved back, I volunteered.”

The museum served as a non-profit, showcasing dolls of all types.

Most had been collected by Robson, but some others were donated by fellow collectors, like Agnes Boss.

Boss was one of the many who experienced Robson’s story-telling firsthand, and helped Robson start the local doll club.

She was also heavily involved in the creation of the museum, having made many dolls in the collections by hand, including one of the “Story Lady” herself.

Boss died in 2021, but Callahan remembers her fondly.

“She could never understand why we couldn’t create dolls the way she could,” said Callahan, “because it was so easy for her.”

Several years after the museum opened, Robson passed away, leaving her collection in the hands of Boss, Callahan, and others.

For nearly a decade and a half, they maintained the museum until financial straits pushed them to close in 2010 and donate much of the collection to the History Center.

Now, the center is planning a new way to exhibit the collection, while making history more accessible for a younger audience.

“We used to have cases in there just full of toys and dolls,” says curator Risha Lilienthal. “We wanted a space where kids could come and do that interactive, hands-on learning.”

The new exhibit will feature a quiet reading room dedicated to the original museum, as a well as large play area full of toys.

For Lilienthal, the idea is show kids that history is more than just learning dates.

“History is stories, it’s the story of people,” she says. “It’s, I think, important to make it a little fun. To show that it is fun, it’s interesting.”

The exhibit will open up alongside the History Center when it comes back from its holiday break on January 8.

The center will also be free for all guests for both January and February thanks to generous donations from community businesses.