Sounds like a threat, doesn’t it, maybe spoken by a western movie gunslinger or an organized crime boss. It means you’re a goner.

You probably don’t know Alan Kugler. But even if you don’t, you will be familiar and probably impacted by his work. The ironic thing is that Alan is the principal in an organization called “Pennsylvania Futures.” Yet he recently told a group that very, threatening-sounding thing. “You’re history!”

Alan is interested and invested in local government and what can be accomplished by cooperation. He has consulted all over northwestern Pennsylvania and even New York and Ohio. Some of the projects he’s been involved with are: development of Warren County’s Council of Government, enhancement of our local 911 system, Warren County Intergovernmental Co-op’s Fire Services Sub-committee, Warren Regional Partnership, Leadership Warren County and similar projects in other communities.

He knows how to get people to work together and accomplish extremely difficult goals, like merging municipalities. What could possibly go wrong with a project like that? Alan knows and also knows how to deal with those issues.

Alan spoke at a recent Leadership Warren County session and before he got to the meat of his presentation on regionalism and what it takes to get diverse groups to work together, he told the group: “You’re history.” Seemed an odd statement.

The explanation was something like this: History got us to where we are. All the people who lived here thousands of years ago, the explorers from Europe, the early oil and timber barons, industrialists, the people who turned the frontier into what we now know as “Warren County,” the generations of our own families, all those people who came before us and shaped our community and our lives are our history. Then he explained that “you,” the class members, are the some-day “history” that will be built upon by your children and grandchildren! He added that LWC is designed, precisely, to ensure that that happens in the most positive way possible.

I was never a great student of history. All those dates to remember…. It didn’t help that my last formal study was a college World History Class that met at 8 a.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. T.G.I.F. parties made attendance at the Saturday class, well, difficult.

Since then, though, I’ve become more interested in history, especially in local history. There are places around here where you can “see” history in the old oil fields, logging roads, millraces, and buildings. You can see the legacy of those who were involved with those things. Names like Struthers, Rouse, and DeFrees come to mind as iconic historical figures.

And Alan says WE’RE history…. Wow. Gives one pause, doesn’t it? It begs the question: How is what you’re doing right now going to look a generation from now? How about two generations? Those would be the important times for your children, grandchildren, and their peers. Will your activities right now now be viewed as contributing to progress or getting in the way of it? Will people be impressed or disappointed with what we did? Are we even giving future folks a chance to be successful based on the groundwork we leave them?

There’s that adage: People who ignore history are likely to repeat it. That always seemed to carry a negative connotation. Isn’t it equally true that if we study the successful people, policies, and programs of history, that we can and should repeat them? How ’bout it? Any present-day Struthers, Rouses, and DeFreeses out there?