Sue Koenig opens ‘Window to the World’ for students

A grand opening is expected in mid-October at the El Paso International Museum of Art in Texas after Koenig, daughter of a Fort Dodge postman and a longtime schoolteacher, donated 10,000 items from her collection to the museum. Only a small fraction of the items can be displayed at one time. Artifacts from the Middle East and Africa will be featured at the outset.

It is an exhibit that never would have occurred but for the long friendship and collaborative efforts of Koenig and her Fort Dodge Senior High classmate from the Class of 1960, Julie Struve Anderson, of El Paso.

Koenig’s collection, much of it gathered from her 11 years of living in Saudi Arabia, had been in storage near her home in suburban Denver since 2006 after the closing of a mall where her Denver version of “Window to the World” exhibition had been located.

Now the 10,000 items have a home in El Paso after Anderson learned of an opportunity to move the collection into a permanent exhibit at the International Museum of Art and was able to get both parties together.

“It was one of those God moments,” said Cynthia Horton, a member of the museum’s board of directors who is heading the project that is in the midst of a fundraising campaign.

Items from Koenig’s donation come from seven regions — Latin America, Europe, Africa, Oceania, East Asia, Southeast Asia and Southwest Asia — and represent the countries’ history and cultural diversity through artifacts, musical instruments, art, clothing, jewelry, and household items.

One of the unique aspects of “Window to the World” is how it presents an interactive cultural experience.

“She designed it to allow people to actually touch the artifacts,” Horton said. “The kids are able try on the costumes and play the musical instruments. I talk to the owner frequently, she is in her 80s now, so we are still gathering her stories of the different items. Every time I learn something new.”

Among the items: 75- to 80-year-old Geisha wig made with real hair, vending carts from Costa Rica and Cairo, a set of Matryoshka (Russian nesting dolls), a handcrafted marionette puppet from Burma, a pair of Pakistani wedding chairs, a camel’s head dress from Jordan, Sherpa shoes from Nepal, and a Turkman bridal veil.

The items arrived in El Paso in 2022 in two separate shipments, totaling 700 boxes weighing 44,000 pounds. A museum classroom was dedicated to store and process the artifacts and store those that will not be immediately displayed. The museum will host students from the University of Texas at El Paso museum studies program to learn in a museum setting.

Another side of the project is “Culture in a Kit,” a traveling, hands-on, educational adventure for students that takes a portion of the “Window to the World” collection into classrooms throughout the area.

To encourage donors to contribute to the project, the museum has hosted five “pop-up” preview exhibits of Koenig’s collection that included 150 items.

Koenig, 82, first opened “Window to the World” in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1995, home to good friends, after returning from Saudi Arabia, where she was hired by Saudi Aramco to teach elementary school classes.

Of the Arkansas experience, she said, “I felt quite sure that many of those students I’d see would probably never even leave their state, much less, the country. And how could they have any idea of how people around the rest of the world live? And that we all have the same basic needs?

“By modeling clothes from a myriad of countries, playing handmade musical instruments from those countries and simply by seeing and actually handling items, be they large or small, that show how the peoples of the world live their daily lives, they could get some idea of the rest of the world. Of course, stories went with all of those items. And since I obtained all the items, I had all the details.

“Before I had the museum, I taught my students about the world, as much as I could around whatever social studies the school district wanted. I figured out ways to work the world into math and language arts as well as social studies. I used to have a travel club after school for kids really interested in the world. Over the years, many ex-students have told me their favorite classes/years were those spent learning about the world with me. I loved teaching them for 32 years, followed by 11 years of sharing the world through the museum.”

Koenig closed her Arkansas operation, a nonprofit, after five years and returned to Denver to open a “Window to the World” there. She needed 10,000 square feet of space, but couldn’t afford the rent. She found free spaces to open it — but they were in dying malls.

“I spent nine months on the last one of them,” she said, “remodeling an old space and then setting up the museum, and then the mall sold and closed and I had to move again.”

That’s when she placed most of the collection in storage.

Her friend of more than 20 years, Sandy Lardinois, who also lives in Lakewood, was on Koenig’s original board of directors. Also a former school teacher, she said Koenig was a remarkable educator.

“Imagine a teacher who made learning fun, relevant, and a lifelong game changer, and you’d describe Sue Koenig,” Lardinois said. “Parents requested her for their kids; reluctant students looked forward to school; and all learning modalities were addressed in her class. Sue brought her outside experiences into the classroom and sent her students into the community for learning opportunities. Weekend assignments could include watching the Denver Broncos, turning it into a math lesson. And, she brought community personnel into the classroom. As a result, many of her students went on to lead inspirational lives of their own. For years, she heard from former students, thanking her.

“In 1984, she had to pass on the honor as Colorado’s Teacher of the Year because she was leaving for Saudi Arabia to teach, living what she taught: being involved, learning, and caring. Sue Koenig is definitely one-of-a-kind.”

Susan Koenig was the oldest child of Bob and Gretchen (Getty) Wretman, followed by her sister Sandy 4 ½ years later and her brother Rich 11 years later. They grew up in a house at 729 12th Ave. N. Her grandfather operated a plumbing company in Fort Dodge. Her father worked as a postman for 34 years, delivering residential and downtown mail on foot. After the children graduated, their mother worked for jewelry stores.

After graduating in 1960 from FDSH, where she worked on the school newspaper, Koenig attended Fort Dodge Junior College, where she was editor of the school newspaper, the Panther Prowl. She earned money through frequent babysitting (35 cents an hour, a job she did through college) and worked at Darrah Insurance. She transferred to the State College of Iowa (now University of Northern Iowa) in Cedar Falls and earned a bachelor’s degree in education in 1964.

“I was the first in the family to go to college,” Koenig said. “I feel I must have an adventurous streak — traveling to places like Russia, China, Saudi Arabia. I certainly didn’t get it from growing up in Fort Dodge, Iowa. The most adventurous thing I did there was dating a guy from Des Moines. And the only trips outside Fort Dodge we took were family vacations to the Black Hills and Chicago.”

As she neared graduation at Northern Iowa, Koenig said, recruiters visited campus from the Jefferson County School District in metropolitan Denver. She accepted an offer to teach elementary school there and worked in the district for 19 years. During that time, she met Fred Koenig in 1967; they were married for six years.

Koenig’s foreign travel began in Jefferson County. She worked extra jobs to save enough money for a ticket to go somewhere every summer. She would return with music, costumes, artifacts, household utensils and language lessons that she would share with her class.

With her travels becoming more frequent, she eventually established an international network of friends with whom she would stay. She was able to learn some of the language, saw how people lived, learned customs and was able to shop with a native.

“I’ve always been a good bargain hunter,” she said, “from the age of 13 when we were buying shoes and coats.”

In 1984 she learned that Saudi Aramco, a state-owned petroleum and natural gas company that is the national oil company of Saudi Arabia, was seeking teachers to educate the children of Aramco expats. There were 20 applicants for a second-grade teaching position in Dhahran, she said, and she got the job. She taught there 1 ½ years, living in a hotel room and riding a bus to school, and then was transferred to Ras Tanura on a peninsula extending into the Persian Gulf. She taught all year, with four weeks off.

“I was thinking I’d stay a year — they didn’t offer contracts as people sometimes only lasted a few months in those days,” Koenig said. “I ended up leading about 40 tours, first in Saudi and then the Middle East and eventually a few tours to unique places in Southeast Asia. I was there nearly 11-1/2 years and loved it.

“Because I was a single woman and thus couldn’t travel in the area alone at that time, I became a tour leader for a natural history association throughout Saudi and countries on the Arabian Peninsula. I also led student groups to several countries from Saudi Arabia, 10 times to Jordan with an emphasis on Petra which is my favorite place. Annually, I took fifth graders to Bahrain since we studied it … the ambassador to Bahrain for several of those years literally lives right across the street from me now. Small world!”

Maram AlDowayan of Alkhobar, Saudi Arabia, met Koenig while a fourth grader attending Saudi schools in the mornings and the Aramco schools in the afternoons. At 48 years old, she still has the Chinese paper cuts Koenig gave her as a child.

“Sue was my most memorable teacher as a child not because of the math we learned or the reading we completed, but because she exposed us to her vast array of items collected from around the world,” she said. “They were never precious as she let us touch and try everything. She encouraged it. Most places I had never heard of. It opened my eyes to so many cultures, traditions and languages …

“I clearly remember her showing us her passport that folded down like an accordion with stamps from so many countries we had never heard of. She planted a seed of curiosity and adventure in each of us. She made the world seem vast and beautiful, full of people with amazing traditions and hearts. She always kept things fun and exuded an indescribable warmth to everyone. She had a great impact on me and many others.

“I pray Allah protects her and shines a light on her life work.”

Anderson and Koenig have been friends since childhood in Fort Dodge, worshipped at the same church (St. Paul Lutheran), attended the same schools and became elementary school teachers. They also both loved to travel. Once she and her husband Joe retired, Anderson said, they traveled to 70 countries. But they never traveled together with Koenig.

Staying in touch through many years, Anderson knew that Koenig’s museum was in storage and that she hoped her collection could somehow reach the children of the world. Anderson had been collecting pictures of items Koenig had over the years, had a video, a list of items, made a notebook and began making phone calls.

“Unfortunately, COVID had hit and the thought of trying on costumes, touching musical instruments and artifacts from around the world did not appeal to all of the museums in El Paso,” she said. “My last hope was the El Paso International Museum of Art. I took the notebook, met with board member Cynthia Horton and the rest is history.”

Koenig’s collection of Nativities, 874 of them when she was awarded a Guinness Record in 2005, now numbers more than 3,000 and is stored in her garage and basement in Lakewood. She did not include them in her donation to the El Paso museum.

“I wish I could find a home for them,” she said. “They would make a unique museum for some little town off a highway across the country. A gift stop would be a hit. A place for visitors to stop on that long trek across the country. Could lead to an international cafe and coffee and pastries and much more. I downplayed religion and overplayed the creativity, materials, art work they are all different. I gave the 10,000 museum items away to an El Paso Museum, but I’m not willing to give the Nativities away, I know there’s none like it anywhere.”