Cars began pulling into the parking lot at around 12:40 p.m., 20 minutes before our tour. It was early August, and engines stayed on for air conditioning while we waited. License plates from Indiana, Maryland, Tennessee and Kentucky adorned the cars. It was a sellout crowd of 11 visitors—a dozen people, counting Lisa Sweasy.
Sweasy has possibly the shortest out-of-house work commute in Kentucky. Our cars were parked in the lot behind Vent Haven in Fort Mitchell, the world’s only museum dedicated to ventriloquism, where she has worked for the last 26 years as curator and director. Her home is located directly across the driveway from the museum, roughly a dozen steps away.
A former high-school math teacher, Sweasy had no ventriloquism experience when she was hired by Vent Haven in 2000. Hard-earned expertise and industry-wide respect have come in the decades since, but originally, she was drawn to the museum role for its flexibility, the prospect of meeting interesting people … and the house.
A perk—and requirement—of the curator role is occupancy of the adjacent four-bedroom home, located just off Dixie Highway in a leafy section of the Northern Kentucky city. It was built in 1915 by the museum’s original benefactor, William Shakespeare (W.S.) Berger, whose interest in ventriloquism led to a collection that ultimately would become Vent Haven. Berger moved into the house owning just a single dummy, but by the time he passed away in 1972, his personal inventory was up to around 500. Berger outlived his entire family, so his house became the compensation package for looking after the collection.
“There’s no salary with the job,” explained Annie Roberts, who held the position before Sweasy and remains on the museum’s board of directors. “Basically, you’re provided with a residence, and utilities are covered.”
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Sweasy grew up in a military family, moving every few years. Her surroundings changed—Massachusetts, West Virginia, Kansas, Missouri, the Carolinas, Mississippi—but she found stability in her schoolwork and reading books. She came to Northern Kentucky for college and hasn’t left, earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Northern Kentucky University before becoming a teacher in a nearby school district.
After having two children of her own, she decided to take a step back from her classroom duties and become a stay-at-home mom. She was a few years removed from teaching when, in late 1999, she bumped into Roberts, a friend and former colleague, at a local tire store. In addition to teaching full time, Roberts had served as the Vent Haven curator since 1993 but was looking to pass the role on to the right person. Sweasy was curious.
“The fact that I had lived in this area for many years and hadn’t heard of it was really intriguing to me,” Sweasy said. “At the time, of course, the internet was in its infancy, and there was no such thing as social media or websites or anything like that. It was just a community treasure that nobody really knew about, and so I thought that was cool.”
Sweasy drove over for a tour, then an interview. She landed the job, and her young family replaced Roberts’ in the brown brick three-story home over Memorial Day weekend in 2000. Then the work started. As when she was a young girl, Sweasy threw herself into her studies, soaking up everything she could about the art and history of ventriloquism.
“She started diving into the archives, and she started reading,” Roberts said. “She really was just like a sponge and absorbed things … It was another job where she could use her teaching degree [and] her learning.”
Roberts accompanied her during the first few weeks of giving tours. Sweasy initially carried a script, but it didn’t take long before she was book-free. When she started in the role, she was giving three or four tours per week. Now, the weekly count usually ranges from eight to 10, spread across Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Tours are by appointment only and are offered from the beginning of May through the end of September. Giving that many tours requires a certain disposition.
“My energy kind of reflects what the tourists are like,” Sweasy said. “So, if they are very energetic and enthusiastic, then I am as well. Sometimes, at the end of something like that—where you feel like you’ve really given it all you’ve got—then you can be a little bit tired … But it’s always a very pleasant experience.”
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Our tour group was her second of the day and included a high schooler, a middle schooler, a 7-year-old boy, parents, a retired magician and a writer. We started in the theater room, watching a six-minute film created by Sweasy’s husband, Bryan, before beginning the journey through roughly 750 dummies across six rooms. The exhibit is set up as a chronological timeline from ventriloquism’s entry into vaudeville in the 1880s to recent history, where performers such as Jeff Dunham and Darci Lynne Farmer help to keep it alive. The heyday of regular late-night talk-show appearances and international renown has past, but there is still a vital, if close-knit, contingent of practitioners. One of them was in our group.
As we reached the third room, the 7-year-old boy revealed that he was preparing to perform his own ventriloquism act at a public library in his hometown. Sweasy stoked his enthusiasm, inviting him to the annual Vent Haven International Ventriloquist Convention that the museum spearheads each July. A few rooms later, she pulled out her cell phone and called one of the makers whose work is on display, so that the boy could speak with him. (Austin Phillips, who is based in Maine, didn’t answer, but did call Sweasy back the next day and was tickled to hear the reason she had called.) At the conclusion of our roughly 90-minute tour, Sweasy stayed late to talk shop and swap stories with the boy and his parents.
“I just love young people, and I think they’re fun and curious,” she said. “I love curious people, and I think a lot of adults lose their curiosity about how things work … They lose that spirit of adventuring out and trying something new.”
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From her transient childhood to her teaching career, her 26 years at Vent Haven to whatever comes next, that sustained spirit of childlike curiosity has been the burning ember through Sweasy’s life. She has protected the glow, keeping it ready for when she needs a light through the unknown. She plans to retire after the 2026 tour season to spend more time with her now-grown children and, of course, read.
Like Roberts before her, Sweasy will stay on to train her replacement and then to serve on the board of directors. Over her career, she has given tours to celebrities, international visitors and industry heavyweights. The job has given her close friends and fluency in a world that she might not have otherwise experienced. It gave her a home—literally, intellectually and energetically. But when asked what she will miss the most, it’s the lifelong student who answers.
“Being around the collection,” she said. “Examining them and reading their histories … learning new stories.”