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Two senior staff members at the March Field Air Museum have resigned following the termination of three museum employees on Oct. 9. The 46-year-old museum at the March Air Reserve Base carries 122 aircraft and 60,000 artifacts.
Jeff Houlihan, the director of collections, curation and restoration for 16 years, and security supervisor Mikey Diaz both resigned in protest this week after the nonprofit’s president Jamil Dada fired collections manager Sherry Ziegler, archivist Karla Conte and restoration assistant Tryston O’Toole.
Dada, who did not respond to requests for comment, cited financial difficulty as the reason for the terminations. Numerous attempts to reach representatives from the museum also were unanswered.
Houlihan said the museum has been financially successful for years. Board member and volunteer James Roever said he sees regular financial statements, and that any claim of financial difficulty is a lie. Public documents from the 2023 fiscal year show all expenses paid for, with a net profit of $140,000.
“I got up to resign. I said, ‘that’s it. I’m done.’ I’ve worked with Sherry for forty years, we worked in the government before, and here now, and she is an exemplary person. She just does an incredible amount of work, and there is no way she should have had to deal with this,” Houlihan said.
Roever and Houlihan both said that the foundation’s bylaws do not allow Dada to fire people without a vote from the board of directors, and that the board was not informed about the terminations before they occurred.
“The board—I’m on the board. The board had no knowledge of it whatsoever. It was never brought up in the meetings I’m in. It just came in on a Thursday morning,” said Roever.
Roever is concerned that the terminations may jeopardize the foundation’s nonprofit status.
Before the staff was fired or quit, they were preparing for an accreditation visit in November by the American Alliance of Museums.
Houlihan said Dada wants to move the museum's focus toward events, and away from archives.
“He wants to get rid of the archives entirely, which are thousands of photographs dating back to 1970, and personal logbooks of military members,” Houlihan said.
The museum has not had an executive director since February.
