Post 736: The Sallows Military Museum makes progress…

The Sallows Military Museum is a small museum in Alliance, Nebraska, dedicated to those who served or are serving in the US military.

The old swimming pool bath house — repurposed to be a military museum.

It is in the old city swimming pool bath house, which the City of Alliance provided to the organization, and it has one paid employee — Suzan; one part-time employee – Jan; and a bunch of volunteers (me included) who come in to assist Suzan by being there so she can deal with a backlog of donated materials, housekeeping issues, and those all-important meetings all administrators “get” to attend.

I go in for three hours on Wednesdays during the Winter Hours season, and probably will return to Thursdays for the Summer Season hours. Yeah, I’m a life member of the museum support group, too!

1000-piece puzzles often help pass the three hours. Some days, no visitors come in. Other days, whole groups do.

All of the exhibits are donations or lent items from local people with military materials, from veterans, family members of veterans, even random people who have items of interest who feel the museum can better conserve and preserve those materials.

WWII artifacts are most common, but there are items from many wars, from the US Civil War through Afghanistan.

WWII artifacts are common, but there are items from many wars, from the Revolutionary War through Afghanistan.

Suzan and Jan have made progress cleaning and organizing the collection since Suzan became the director of the museum. Material that came in during the period between the previous director’s last day and Suzan’s first day several months later created a backlog that continues to be her priority to catalog and work into the mix of displays.

Jan (left) and Suzan work on a display update.

What is of particular interest to locals is how many men and women in these photos lining the shelves are the younger selves of people we often knew as parents of people we went to school with: Heroes hide among us! But time is thinning out the ranks, making the museum all the more important as a depository of the collective memory of a community’s military contributions.

Familiar faces in unfamiliar roles as defenders of American freedom. It is humbling!

One remarkable resource at the museum is a collection of veterans’ personal remembrances of their military service. Some include letters written from war zones, all detail the experiences of the veteran. These first source references probably need to be held in reserve for researchers at some point, but now sit on an open shelf where anyone with the time and interest can take them down and read through them.

Post 512: Molly Moon and other matters…

My sister e-mailed this message to me this morning:

“I was amazed at the number of posts you received on Molly Moon and Sox and I appreciate all of them. I will never give up on finding Sox, but Molly provides some distraction from thinking and worrying about him 24 hours a day.”

Thanks to you who commented! Oh, and it turns out there is an ice cream chain on the West Coast called “Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream” shop. My sister’s grandkids knew about it, and let my sister know about the name.

🙂

It’s official. I just passed my fifth year as a volunteer with the RSVP program in my community. Though I’m not much for awards because I never know what to do with certificates, pins, and the like, I appreciate being appreciated. If being appreciated involves a certificate and a pion, well, I can deal with it! Here’s the pin:

I guess I posted that in a size large enough to see…! I mostly volunteer once a week at the local military museum. Though I also drive veterans to VA clinic appointments, that’s more occasional since there are other ways for these people to get to appointments.

Post 413: museum day

After yesterday’s busy trip to the veterinarian with Andy and the follow-up posts and video, today lacked drama.

This morning, I answered comments on the videos and post, tossed some of the boys’ new toys out for them to chase (and knock under things, where I’ll find them when I clean, I fear!), and spent the afternoon at the military museum.

The museum will be open seven days a week for the summer, which is nice because it means new volunteers will fill in the five other days a week another volunteer and I didn’t cover since last summer.

A new director was hired, I think, after a long search, and she will have a logjam of busy work going back to last summer to catch up with. A good way to learn what’s involved in the museum, eh?!

With the warmer weather, I had several visitors today, something that didn’t happen most of the winter. I always feel great when this city resource starts to get some use! With the coming holiday, Memorial Day, it is all the more important that people visit the military museum for a reminder of what the holiday is all about.

I like to use live flowers when I decorate family graves for Memorial Day. Mom used to put out geraniums when it was her turn to honor our dead, and it has been my turn to continue the tradition the past few years.

Post 354: Sox’s new toy

This is a lazy day post because I have several things to take care of outside the house today.

The boys have their semi-monthly day at the “cat spa”, where they’ll be washed, trimmed, and turned into pretty boys for a short time before their normal cat activities muss up the froufrou their groomers work so hard to do. Yes, they will look like normal cats minutes after I bring them home!

I talk with my financial advisor a bit later this morning. I’m doing OK in this matter, so don’t have to fight my cats for food yet. 😉

Then, I’ll spend the afternoon at the military museum.

What I have to give you today, though, is a photo of my boys’ cat-cousin Sox (my Seattle sister’s boy) with his cat lounger and a new favorite toy, a toilet paper tube cut on the ends to… well, you can see it in the photo! Sox is one handsome boy, eh?!

Cat-cousin Sox stalks the toilet paper tube critter…

He’s a tuxedo cat, something you can’t tell in the photo, and is a particularly beautiful example of that type of cat. I don’t say that because he’s my cat-nephew. It’s just the truth! Hey, here’s a second photo of Sox:

Cat-cousin Sox, a real fox!

I especially like his white whiskers!

donations for the museum

One thing fun about volunteering at the military museum is I sometimes get to receive memorabilia to add to the collection.

Yesterday, a fellow, Myron W., brought in several items he thought we might like, though he wasn’t too sure. Like a framed copy of the famous photo of a sailor kissing the nurse in Times Square at the end of WWII. A Seabee pennant. An equator crossing certificate dated August 1943. A handbook the US Navy gives to new seamen to help them learn the things sailors need to know to be good sailors, this one a 1940 issue. Three war bond savings books, two for 10 cent stamps, and one for 25 cent stamps.

I wrote down each item on the sheet used to receive items into the collection, and each one gave evidence of the challenges people endured in WWII, both as members of the armed services and as civilians. Myron and I had a long talk about each item and how it would enrich the collection held at the museum.

[The Sallows Military Museum.]

He seemed relieved. His late wife was the collector in his family, he noted. She didn’t throw away anything, especially if it had a history behind it. She loved history, and she cherished each of these items, preserved them in pristine condition for decades. Then she died.

“It’s just clutter to me,” he said, “but it meant so much to my wife. None of our kids is interested in any of it, but I don’t want it around.”

He pointed to his head with both hands, “This is where I keep my wife’s memory. I keep our family history in here! I don’t need things to remember.” He noted “things” just made him sad. He hoped the museum could use the items, a tribute to his wife’s care in preserving them all those years.

I reassured him he’d just donated some of the nicest items of those I’d received from people for the museum, because they’d been so well cared for, but also because they told so many stories about a specific time and people in our country’s history, a time where it wasn’t certain we’d even survive as a free people. Darn right, the museum was glad to accept them! How else, how better to inform young people about the process that saved this country and the world from brutal regimes? How else, how better to honor the memories of the people who fought those battles, survived that time, and helped create the world we enjoy today?

The Sallows Military Museum isn’t a large institution. It gets scant funds from the city to stay open. It isn’t even open every day because of lack of volunteers. Until recently, it only had one paid employee, a part time curator who put her heart into running the museum and making the exhibits meaningful. I rarely have a lot of people show up during my time there on Thursdays as a volunteer, and they rarely stay very long. It’s not fancy. In fact, it is in an old city property – the 1930s swimming pool bath house – that was refurbished and refitted to become the museum. Lots of volunteer help made it happen, many small money donations. No less important, maybe even more important, are people like the man who brought in the donations yesterday. The museum is a community project that empties closets and basements of “useless” stuff taking up space and makes it into meaningful displays that personalize the history of some of the country’s toughest challenges and our community’s role in it.

Myron, of course I was glad to accept your donations for the museum! Thank you! And bless your late wife for her foresight to save the items you donated in her and your family’s name! I don’t get paid to open the museum for three hours on Thursday afternoons, but thanks to people like you, I definitely feel rewarded!