By Tracy Gupton

For a couple months now, visitors to West Columbia’s museum have been getting used to a new face working with the volunteers in the old First Capitol Bank building at 247 East Brazos Avenue. The Columbia Historical Museum Board of Directors hired Sally Rueffer earlier this year to manage the museum.

Sally brings many years of experience working with the public to her new role as museum manager. She was a travel agent for 30 years in the Bryan-College Station area and was manager of the Haskell Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center while also having worked the front desk at Lake Conroe.

“I’m very proud of having created several events with the Haskell Chamber of Commerce,” Rueffer said. “The annual event on the courthouse square was something I spearheaded in Haskell. And the Chamber funded the new sound system at the courthouse when I was the Chamber of Commerce manager.”

Haskell is the county seat of Haskell County and is located about 55 miles north of Abilene, Texas.

While Sally lived in three foreign countries while growing up, her father is a native of the West Columbia area. Sally is lucky to still have both of her parents. Her Dad, Cecil Stedman, is a 1952 graduate of West Columbia High School while Sally’s mother, Nancy Stedman, grew up in Kingsville, Texas. Sally has lived with her parents in Wild Peach the past dozen years and keeps busy helping raise her granddaughter, Addie.

Sally attended schools in several foreign countries and graduated high school in May 1976 from the International School in Manila. She spent five years living in Indonesia and Singapore. Sally said her father sold drilling products and moved around a lot associated with the oilfields in foreign countries during her youth. But the new museum manager’s family roots are deeply embedded in this area of Brazoria County. Her Dad’s mother was a telephone operator in Brazoria many years ago.

In more recent years Sally would have been a familiar face at the pro shop at the West Brazos Golf Center in Wild Peach when her parents owned that business. “I came back to this area to help my Daddy run his driving range,” Sally said. She was the assistant manager of the West Brazos Golf Center from 2013 to September 2022 when her parents sold the business.

They still live on family property near the driving range on Country Road 507 in Wild Peach.

She and her first husband spent over 30 years in the Bryan-College Station area where they raised their three children, Aaron Watson, Austin Watson and Angela Watson Hertel. Sally was a travel agent most of that time, working closely with the public from 1979 to 2010. She is also the stepmother of Rebecca Rueffer Galindo.

Her second husband, Jack Rueffer, passed away three-and-a-half years ago. He was a West Texas native who managed a cotton gin and worked his own farm near Abilene. Sally and Jack married in 2005 and she became executive director and manager of the Haskell Chamber of Commerce in 2007.

“I was the liaison between the local Chamber of Commerce, the city manager and the county judge,” Sally explained her duties in that role. “A regional organization known as the Texas Midwest Community Network brought together towns and communities and assisted them with promoting new economic development.”

Speaking of her new role as the West Columbia museum’s manager, Sally Rueffer said she learns something new practically every day on the job about the history of West Columbia and East Columbia. She said when she enters the Rosenwald School (located directly behind the museum at the corner of Broad and Clay streets) it is like stepping back in time to an era that occurred long before she was born. The Rosenwald School was originally built in the 1920s in East Columbia as a school for Black children during the days of racial segregation. The Columbia Historical Museum board members were instrumental in having the old schoolhouse, which was being used as a hay barn at the time, moved to town and placed on the museum grounds earlier this century.

Sally said she worked closely with a board of directors in Haskell while serving as that West Texas town’s chamber of commerce manager, which has prepared her for the current role she serves as manager of the Columbia Historical Museum in West Columbia. The local museum is under the direction of its own board of directors.

The Columbia Historical Museum is open for tours from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Tours of the historical Rosenwald School are also available while visiting the museum. For further information, contact the museum at (979) 345-6125.