Category: Military News
2013 in Review
2013 was a wonderful year for us at the Museum of the American Military Family. We continue to grow and mature as an organization. We are very thankful for all of our all-volunteer board members, our friends, supporters and sponsors. We appreciate our writers who sent in stories for our blogs and cards for our Postcard Project. Thanks to donors, we met our $20,000 goal to create our 2014 exhibit, “Sacrifice & Service: The American Military Family, which is being built in collaboration with the National Nuclear Museum of Science and History in Albuquerque.
Here’s where our exhibit will be
We have begun to design the exhibit, and Caroline, our Writer-in-Residence, has completed much of the text panel script. On January 3rd, she and I will sort through all of the quotes we have gathered from military family members over the past several years, and add them to the panels.
Jim Walther, Director of the Nuclear Museum, has begun the set/ elevation drawings and I have started inventorying and collecting artifacts for the display. Of course, we need to extend our gratitude to David, Toby, Sandy, David, Greg, Casey, Charles and Jennifer from the Nuclear museum—all of whom are working alongside us each step of the way, lending their expertise.
The exhibit design team
Jim holds up a sample graphic for us to consider
How the script for text panels looks
We lay out the artifacts and match them to text panel script and sketches
Sacrifice & Service: The American Military Family will open on Memorial Day, 2014, and run through Labor Day at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History in Albuquerque. The exhibit, much of it interactive, will illustrate the achievements of, and the issues faced by, the mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, and other family members of the men and women who have served the nation’s military since World War II. Themes will include Pride, Culture, Loss, Sacrifice, Deployment, and Reunion, and will offer visitors an opportunity to share their own stories about when a loved one goes off to serve. » Read more
Reasons for Thanksgiving
As the Museum of the American Family all-volunteer board sits back and reflects on the past few months, it is apparent that we have a lot to be thankful for.
Our biggest news is that the Rivera family, of Robert Rivera Construction in Santa Rosa, NM, have generously donated seven 1947 military family housing units for our museum. While they are structurally sound, they will need to be moved to our building site, gutted and rehabbed before we can occupy them. This will take a significant amount of money. We will continue our fundraising in order to rehab these little treasures. We would very much appreciate donations of money, building materials or labor as we move forward. To donate directly to our website, please click here:
The 1940’s houses were TLFs on Kirtland AFB through the late 1990s.
They are 25X30 square feet
These are the seven houses that the Rivera Construction company donated to MAMF
Speaking of moving, where are we moving to?
The City of Albuquerque has suggested a site in a park near Kirtland Air Force Base, the New Mexico Veteran’s Memorial and the VA Hospital. An architect has provided a preliminary drawing and is in the process of refining it. The various City departments are meeting to see if our museum will be a good fit in this location. We are confident that all parties will come to an agreement very soon, and we can begin to apply for permits and begin the building’s physical move to their permanent “home”.
