Dear Awesome Gloucester:

This is our third time applying for a grant to aid Gloucester's Civil War coat. The second time we applied, we were honored to be invited to give a presentation. Since your committee was encouraging and enthusiastic about our lecture, we hope the third time is a charm. But this time things are different. We have a new update and mission regarding the coat. The restoration is a thing of the past! Thanks to many generous donors and support from a few great organizations like the Gloucester fund and the Office of Veterans Affairs and the city we are excited to report that from the fall of 2015 through the spring of 2016 we led a successful fundraising drive. We raised $4600 which was used to restore this precious Civil War artifact relating in many ways to Gloucester and the county. Gloucester may have one of the only existing articles of clothing that was formerly owned by a slave. The cry to save the coat originated with an appeal that made its way to the Office of Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken; Jim Destino sent it to the Committee for the Arts and gave the first donation. The committee arranged for a conservator that was able to fix the coat once enough money was raised. The coat was stabilized and completely restored by November 2016. Now it awaits a secure display case: that's our new mission! We spoke with Principal Cook about this whole thing and he agreed with us that the coat needs its own display case. We did a public survey and spoke with many others, too. The original estimate to repair the coat did not include the display case and it was under by about $1000 which is why we have no leftover money from the $4600 we raised. (During the fundraising the scope of the conservator’s original job was changed to have her make it safe enough to stand up 3D and for transport.) All the money raised went to the conservator.