Honoring Our Veterans
Military Heritage and Aviation Museum Preserves the Stories and Memories of Those Who Fought for Our Country
It’s said that every life has a story and that the art of the storytelling lies in the words, pictures, memorabilia, physical scraps and accumulated threads that weave it into a whole. Along
the walls of Punta Gorda’s Military Heritage and Aviation Museum are such scraps and threads. Each tells the stories of veterans from both long ago and present day, whose military service comprises
their most memorable, and too often most tragic and final, chapters.
There’s the World War II helmet worn by North Port resident Herb Brough that bears the scars of the shrapnel that pierced the helmet and liner. It nearly killed him, leaving him with a steel plate in his skull. That happened on December 17, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge. He was just 19.
There’s the glass-encased paper history of a young Edward F. Reilly, Jr., an Army Air Corps pilot from Brooklyn, N.Y. His military story begins with his induction papers, followed by his poignant letters home to his family. It culminates with a telegram from the War Department advising his youthful bride that his plane went missing over Austria in April of 1945. A final letter several years later confirms the worst, detailing the discovery and burial of his remains in an overseas grave.
Then there’s the Tiger Cage, vintage Vietnam circa 1969. It’s a replica of the one Captain Luis Chirichigno of Naples spent eight months in during his nearly four-year ordeal at the notorious “Hanoi Hilton” prisoner of war camp in North Vietnam. Along with the cage are the cotton “pajamas” and “slippers” constructed of old tires that were standard garb for American prisoners.
More than 30,000 military artifacts have found their way to the Punta Gorda museum at Fishermen’s Village, most of them gifts from veterans or their families who reside here or have passed through as vacationers. Thousands more are boxed away in three local storage facilities. And behind each one, said Kim Lovejoy, the museum’s executive director, is a story of personal heroism and sacrifice.
“We want to be able to honor their stories; that’s why this museum is here,” Lovejoy said. “We focus on telling our veterans’ stories, and we have all kinds of artifacts that help us do that.”
Examples of weapons from each of our country’s military conflicts line the walls along with flags, medals, uniforms, helmets and other accoutrements of war. However, the museum’s focus is more on the personal items that tell the “story behind the story,” the story of a particular veteran’s individual wartime experience.
Lovejoy points to a yellowing front page of the Honolulu Advisor, dated November 30, 1941. The banner headline reads, “Japanese May Strike Over Weekend!” The paper, she said, was distributed to patients in a nearby Army hospital, but when military personnel learned of it, they began confiscating the papers from the patients.
One quick-thinking soldier ripped the front page from his copy and stuffed it under his mattress. Today, that early warning headline foreshadowing the bombing of Pearl Harbor just a week later hangs on the museum wall in Punta Gorda, likely the only one still in existence.
The museum has been in official operation since December 7, 2001, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Local veteran’s groups served as the impetus for the museum, “because so many people were donating their memorabilia and artifacts to the various VFW’s and American Legions,” Lovejoy explained. “It became clear these things needed a permanent home under a single roof.”
Since then, the museum has moved twice and undergone a number of personnel changes, both in its board of trustees and director positions. Its rocky beginnings are explained as “the growing pains of an organization that is transitioning from a fraternal club project to a professionally managed museum,” said Marilyn Smith-Mooney, president of the museum’s board of trustees.
Smith-Mooney, a Punta Gorda councilwoman, took on the president’s job last year just as the museum’s board members were
squabbling and its executive director was resigning. Since then, she said, the organization has regrouped. Under new direction, the focus and goals have become clearer, and the path of its future
life in Charlotte County has crystallized.
On the museum’s plate is a new challenge, one that Smith-Mooney calls “the biggest test I’ve ever come up against.” That challenge is the plan to relocate the museum from its humble, 2,500 square feet of display space in Fishermen’s Village to a new, state-of-the-art facility the directors hope to build on leased land at Charlotte County Airport.
The scope of this undertaking is enormous, she admits, particularly for a nonprofit organization whose directors are unpaid, and, with the exception of Lovejoy, is staffed solely by volunteers, mostly local veterans who give the tours and talk to museum visitors.
The museum has acquired a 50-year lease on a five-acre site at the airport. One requirement of the lease, Smith-Mooney said, is that construction must begin by January of 2009. Construction costs are projected to be in the $6 million range, with another $4 million needed in endowment funds to maintain its operations once it finally opens.
A capital fund committee of 15 members is currently planning a campaign to tap deep-pocketed donors, and Smith-Mooney hopes that giving potential contributors “naming rights” to various areas of the museum will help convince them to open their hearts and wallets to the museum’s undertaking.
Plans call for a 20,000-square-foot facility, which will include a central welcoming lobby with a floor-to-ceiling world map pinpointing the areas of U.S. military conflicts. The museum will then present a timeline of military history, and much of it will be interactive, Smith-Mooney said. Patrons will be able to both see the artifacts and hear veterans tell their stories in their own words.
She said plans also include a number of virtual reality displays: foxholes, trenches, submarine sleeping quarters and the like.
In keeping with the goal of telling personal histories, the museum will also offer booths to record the oral history of any veteran who wishes to be part of the museum archives. The plan, Smith-Mooney said, is to air each of these veterans’ stories on flatscreen displays during visiting hours, and veterans participating in the oral history project may choose a timeframe for their histories to be featured. All oral histories and accompanying photos will be archived in the museum database for research purposes and will be available to all visitors.
There are also plans for a canteen, community meeting area, special exhibition gallery, history gallery, reading room and ceremonial grounds area. The museum will also house Florida’s Civil Air Patrol.
But both Smith-Mooney and Lovejoy insist that the critical focus is not on the plans, but the veterans whose memories will be preserved.
Lovejoy, herself a veteran and current Air Force reservist, explains that there’s a commonality of experiences among veterans that is difficult to verbalize, but is nonetheless shared by all who have military experience. It’s this special connection to others in the military that has made the current museum such a popular visitor spot.
“There’s this camaraderie among military people that just doesn’t exist in any other social circles,” she said. “You could be stationed to a new base, or you move to a new area, not knowing a soul, and you sit down among strangers who share your military experiences, and instantly, you’re friends.”
