Are We There Yet?

Museum tornado flattened soldiers on in Vilonia

A wheel-mounted machine gun made in Czarist Russia for World War I is one of the many objects on display at the Museum of Veterans & Military History in Vilonia.
A wheel-mounted machine gun made in Czarist Russia for World War I is one of the many objects on display at the Museum of Veterans & Military History in Vilonia.

VILONIA -- The Museum of Veterans & Military History, open again after a tornado devastated its original home last year, is run by amateurs in the original and best sense of that word.

The Latin root of "amateur" is "amare," meaning "to love." And love for their community is what inspired volunteers to rebuild the display-packed museum at a new location after the twister that killed nine in this Faulkner County town on April 27, 2014. The storm ripped open the two-story onetime orphanage in which the museum had opened in 2012.

One of those volunteers, Jim McGraw, gave a visiting couple an enlightening guided tour on a recent Saturday afternoon. An Army paratrooper in the 1950s, he's one of the leaders in reviving the battered museum -- a heartwarming story told last fall in a New York Times feature.

"This museum is the community's museum," director Linda Hicks told the Times reporter. "And just about everybody in the community has bought into this museum. This is their museum."

Along with Hicks, her husband, Paul, and others, McGraw salvaged artifacts from the wreckage -- although many smaller items were scattered and lost in the maelstrom.

McGraw, his wife, Sharon, the Hickses and fellow enthusiasts raised money for the new building. Dedicated on the tornado's first anniversary, the windowless structure looks like a concrete fortress. That figures, because it's designed to withstand even the strongest storms.

As McGraw explained, the museum's holdings grew substantially this spring. That was thanks to Harold Steelman, a lineman on the University of Arkansas' legendary 1954 Southwest Conference championship team. Later a football coach and manager of Little Rock's War Memorial Stadium, Steelman donated his extensive Traveling Military Museum of Arkansas collection.

Going as far back as the replica of a kilted uniform of a Scottish Redcoat from the Revolutionary War, Steelman's trove is especially strong in World War II material. Bulky insulation suits worn by crews of B-17 and B-24 bombers serve as reminders of how cold as well as dangerous it was flying in those unpressurized aircraft.

A formidable object with a long history is a wheel-mounted machine gun originally made for the Czarist Russian army of World War I. A quarter-century later, in the first winter of World War II, it was deployed by Finnish troops in the fight against invading Soviet forces.

A curtained alcove holds mannequins that evoke the brutality of the Vietnam War, including an American prisoner of war confined in a so-called Tiger Cage made of bamboo and guarded by a North Vietnamese soldier.

There's not much humor here, as is the case at most military museums. But a bumper sticker gives a sardonic twist to the Southeast Asian conflict that so sharply divided America: "I was a Vietnam vet before it became popular."

The Museum of Veterans & Military History, 53 N. Mount Olive Road, Vilonia, is open 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Friday-Saturday, as well as 1-4 p.m. the first Sunday of each month. Admission is free, with donations welcome.

For information, call (501) 796-8181 or visit museumofveteransandmilitaryhistory.com.

Weekend on 09/10/2015

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