Treasury of Memories

Interest piqued, I returned once again to the Warhawk Air Museum (a place I thought once upon a time I’d never go) to interview Director Sue Paul. I thought a good intro would be to ask her which items spoke to her, given my experience during my last visit. I should have guessed the answer:

“The whole museum speaks to me. Everything in here has meaning to me. I know the history of all of them. These are someone’s memories.”

Sue and her husband John are the co-founders. He’d been restoring WWII airplanes for years. When they moved from the Bay Area to Idaho in 1986 they brought two restored fighter planes and a P-51 Mustang that was in pieces along with them. They opened their manufacturing company and then built a small hangar at the Caldwell airport.

They were promptly overwhelmed by the amount of interest from people wanting to see the planes, unaware at the time of the Valley’s military history with Mountain Home AFB. Many people started coming to the Caldwell airport to see the planes and to talk about them. Boxes of uniforms or WWII memorabilia were left at the door with notes saying, ‘I don’t know what to do with these; would you like to put them with your airplanes?’

The Pauls were disturbed by this; these were precious pieces of peoples’ histories. Sue knew the items must be preserved and saw the need for a museum. She researched how to form a non-profit museum and in 1989 the Warhawk Air Museum, a non-proft 501c3, was born. It had taken a full year to put it all together.

“From there, it just exploded,” says Sue. “We had a board of directors and all kinds of dreams for the future. By the year 2000 we’d completely outgrown the 7000 square foot Caldwell hangar and knew we needed something bigger and centrally located. I also wanted a program where children could come for field trips and learn about history.”

John and Sue felt fortunate to have had their planes used in the movie Pearl Harbor with Ben Affleck. The various actors went in and out of each plane during the filming. John and Sue went to Hawaii for six weeks during production. The planes were flown down to the Naval Base at Coronado Beach, then put on a barge, pulled by a little tugboat across the ocean, which was worrisome to the owners, even though Disney had the planes insured for millions. If the planes were lost, they’d most likely never be able to replace them, since there are only around 20-25 of the P-40s left in the entire world, and only four of that particular type of Mustang.

As soon as the public was aware of the 20,000 square foot building, everything started coming in. During the next five years people brought in their collections, one after the other. Systems of cabinets were needed to create a space for it all. Volunteers appeared and started helping wherever they could. The Museum is always open for more, too. Those that volunteer are given a chance to find their own passion and niche. One archivist, Lou Bauman, who started out doing field trips now puts all of the displays and binders together.

“He loves it. He does a brilliant job,” said Sue, “Many others started off doing one thing and then found something else they had a passion for, so that’s what they get to do.”

Sue quit her ‘paying job’ in 2001 and is now the full-time volunteer director. She’s at the museum full time.

‘---Because that’s what it takes,’ she told me.

In August of 2010 the new 18,000 square foot Cold War Era wing was opened, where you can walk through a Berlin Wall replica into a very different sense of American history.

“As you walk into the second section, you’ll have a whole different feel of the fifties and sixties. The last section was an era where America was engaged in the war. Man, woman and child. Everybody was involved. We knew who our enemy was. There was a beginning to the conflict and there was a definite end. We knew we won. We knew exactly who our foes were; we knew who our friends were. Then the war ended and we went into the Cold War Era with the fear of communism, fear of ideologies. Not solid. There weren’t boundaries. The wars of the Cold War became something like trying to put your arms around a cloud. Americans were not engaged this time in that. You didn’t see them out there with flags; you didn’t see the patriotic posters. People in America were trying to move on with their lives. The GI bill was huge. For the first time in American history, anyone could get an education, and they did.”

“The GI bill educated America. Our doctors, lawyers, businessmen during that time all came from the Bill. People wanted to build homes and move to the suburbs. They didn’t want or understand why when the Korean War started. We were in one country as advisors; it wasn’t clear cut. Vietnam was the same thing.”

This was the section representing the jet age. Bomb shelter information is coming soon. The build up of Communism and the feeling of the fear of Communism lingers. Visitors can see that the technology vastly changed from one era to another as the TV entered homes during the 50s and 60s. The media had a big portion of the control when it came to how America viewed Vietnam.

Kiosks house information about Cold War history where different stories are told. The tales are there for those that choose to stand and listen for a while.

“We hear people telling us all the time that this is the most personal experience they’ve ever had in a museum,” Sue told me, “That means so much to us. You can go to a lot of museums and see things without knowing the history of it. Take this Huey, here…it wound up in a junkyard in Sacramento. We found it and brought it here, having no idea that we’d also find all of the last of the crew that fought in this exact aircraft. They’ve all been here, and it was a very emotional experience for them. They lost thirty-four men while fighting in this Huey. For the first time they were able to hold a Missing Man Ceremony to honor those men here, with this Huey. It’s about the stories; it’s about the people.”

“Visitors are shocked not only at what they find, but over the amount of time they want to spend here. They want to come back again and again because we’re always adding more. This is not a stagnant museum.”

A dad, a grandfather, an uncle will bring their collection, wanting their loved ones’ memories preserved because they like what the Museum has done.

On the first Tuesday of every month from 10am-12 is the Kilroy Coffee Klatch, free for veterans. It’s a connection thing. The group has grown from a mere fifteen to twenty to the current 125-150. Men who’d served on the same ship at the same time yet had never met each other swap stories. Two men found each other and discovered that one’s man’s wife had been another man’s girlfriend sixty years prior.

Another program is the Veteran’s History Project. Partnering with the Library of Congress, the Museum has preserved over 700 personal histories on film. They keep one copy, give one to the interviewee, and one goes to the Library of Congress. Families get to hear stories they’ve never heard for the very first time, directly from the person they care about.

“We do get emotional during the interviews,” Sue says, “We can turn off the camera at any point. We hear some real hard stuff, but a lot of joyful things too. It’s just very personal. There’s a sense of trust here; they open up. One veteran, although he’s not the only one this happens to, had never talked about his experiences. He was involved in the firebombing over Japan. When we finished the interview he was like a teenager, he just had this relief. He ordered seventy-five copies of the dvd!”

Sue recalled having a man approach her at a luncheon, saying, “You probably don’t remember me, but I’ve just got to tell you that my family and I spent Christmas morning with you.” He then went on to tell her that she’d interviewed his grandfather, who’d died just two months later. On Christmas morning, his parents gave them each a copy of the dvd, and they all watched it together.

“You have no idea what that means to our family to have my grandfather who we all loved so much sitting there telling his own story,” he said.

“To me,” said Sue, “The greatest joy is not just preserving the stories, but the fact that the families have these stories now.”

“What a treasure,” I commented.

Sue looked me right in the eye and said earnestly:

“That’s what the whole museum is. It is a treasure.”