ATA HOF-The End Of An Era

Many of us remember visiting Vandalia and the ATA Hall of Fame always seemed to be on our bucket list. Sure it was cramped and seemed a bit disorganized but at least it was ours. How times have changed. It's pretty obvious ATA membership has dwindled and seems to be mostly composed of a few old time members and plenty of temporary youth members with not much in between. I often bring up deceased HOF members to some of the young shooters I meet in my conversations but mostly I get a puzzled look. Talk to a typical 14 yo shooter about Orlich, Little and probably Harrison and you might as well talk about the price of oranges in Ethiopia-if you can even get them to look up from their phones.
That said, moving the HOF to Sparta probably made it nearly irrelevant.in today's trapshooting world. Buying your way in certainly lowered the credibility of selection. Probably the only way to increase exposure would be to get an agreement with Cardinal Center for a move there but it might take Donald Trump to pull that one off. When we really get down to it our best alternative in the near future is to remove the artifacts and store them in a climate-controlled warehouse. Then in ten years when most of us would care even less what they did the new generation of leaders will look at the cost effectiveness of prolonged storage and auction off the contents.