Group works toward creation of a veterans memorial museum

DIXON — A group of local residents committed to honoring Americans’ service and sacrifice have something in common with the men and women who’ve defended our nation.

They aren’t giving up.

They know their task is daunting and the road ahead may be long, but they’re on a mission — to bring a veterans museum to Dixon.

“Dick Herbon came up with the idea that we needed a museum,” Al Wikoff said. “Stuff started coming into the little visitor center, and then we outgrew that. We were talking one day and said we needed to go bigger. We had to do something different. They came up with the idea and looked into building buildings, and then Ron Dewey decided to sell [his building] and we bought this.”

The museum would compliment its neighbor, Veterans Memorial Park, and would be the latest in a line of honors in the city that celebrate veterans’ service.

Veterans Memorial Park is an impressive site that greets visitors as they enter Dixon from the west with a collection of military gear, including an M60 battle tank and F-105D Thunderchief fighter-bomber.

The park’s visitors center, the two-room Headquarters & Headquarters Co. building, has collected more than enough material to display in its two small rooms: uniforms, mortar rounds, helmets, and military honors. Commissioners saw in the former auto repair shop an opportunity to do justice to their growing collection.

Repairs and remodeling is needed. Preservation of the collection is another consideration.

“In order to preserve the artifacts right, you have to have humidity controls and have it in a specific range so that fabric doesn’t fall apart,” park commissioner Roger Willey said. “There’s a handful of specific things to a museum that we have to have, such as having the building insulated well enough.”

The museum itself is a nonprofit 501 (c) 3 organization, and donations to it are tax-deductible. Donations of artifacts keep coming in, but for now they are kept in storage.

In the meantime, though, volunteers are putting together their plans, never losing sight of their objective.

“We’ve got a lot of learning to do,” Wikoff said. “We’re starting out small, but I can see it getting bigger. We got to have some things in place. Even if you’re starting out small, you got to have heat, the right humidity, and all kinds of stuff to wrap it all in. We’re making it compatible so that when stuff comes in, it doesn’t get boxed up anymore.”

Plans call for displays with accompanying placards that feature information about the pieces as well as a scan codes for smartphone users who want to learn more. The codes not only help point people to more information, they appeal to younger visitors, too.

“What we envision is a scan code where you can scan it with your phone and it can give you all of the information for each display,” park commissioner Mike Mills said. “That’s what we’ve seen in other museums, so we’re learning from these places.”

Willey also hopes the scan codes will get people to go learn more about the military.

“We have catalogs of information with whatever people donate,” Willey said. “One of our projects is to get it all digitized and put on a website, where people who scan something can go see all of the relevant information about it.”

One challenge to opening a veterans museum in the 2020s is the dwindling number of World War II survivors who can tell their stories in person. According the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, only about 167,00 of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II were alive in 2022, a number that will only grow smaller. More often than not, donations of material and the stories that come with them are done by the veterans’ family.

“[Other museums] had people who could talk to you and tell you about the artifacts and stuff like that,” Wikoff said. “We won’t be able to do that because those World War II guys aren’t here anymore.”

The museum’s volunteers can help elicit some important information when it accepts donations, such as what certain items were used for, what markings may mean, and sometimes how something ended up in a soldier’s possession.

“A lot of stuff we get is from someone whose fathers have passed,” park commissioner Keane Hudson said. “A lot of vets didn’t talk about it. If they have pictures, we’ll take pictures and some literature information, but with a lot of them, you won’t get it. Hopefully, with what all we’ll have, maybe people will realize that we are interested in all that kind of stuff, not just the artifact itself, but where did it come from. If their Dad was in the Battle of the Bulge, that’s important.”

While the short-term goals are in place for the museum, long-term goals are on the board too: the park commission also owns two parcels of property on Lincoln Avenue north of its current building that it hopes to use to add on to the building. One of the parcels has a vacant house on it that’s slated for demolition in the near future.

Wikoff saw how veterans got involved to create the park in 2001. He envisions the same happening with the museum now.

“The Sauk Valley has veterans all over the place,” Wikoff said. “When we were building the Veterans Memorial Park, we called upon veterans to come and help us. It didn’t make any difference what you needed, there was a veteran who did it.”

How to donate

Donations can be mailed to Veterans Memorial Park Museum, P.O. Box 591, Dixon, IL, 61021, with checks made out to “Veterans Memorial Park Museum.” Donations also can be dropped off at the park’s visitor center, open from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday until the end of September. Online payments can be made through PayPal or Venmo.

Go to dixonveteranspark.org, email thunderchief105d@hotmail.com or call 815-288-1911 for more information on museum and its fundraising goals, to arrange a donation or to assist with the development of the museum.