by Dr. Allen Dale Olson
A Small, Unique Museum Tells How
Imagine you are a teacher (or a lawyer or a cashier or any other employee who likes your job) married to a military spouse. At dinner one evening, you are informed that your spouse just got orders to move overseas or across the country. What happens to you? You, of course, should go along, but what about your own career? Is it over? Can it continue in the new location? Not likely if overseas. Maybe, but not for certain, if to another state.
Imagine you are a high school football player and the coach has just told you he is counting on you for your senior year, and you come home to a father telling that the family is moving to Germany next month.
Imagine you just finished first grade in your American school in Japan and your mother says the family is moving back to the “States.” Your first thought is that’s what a lot of your friends did, and you never saw them again.
Imagine you’re the mother of two toddlers living in a Filipino village and your husband has been summoned to the base because the Marcos government is falling and there may be civil conflict; you are told to stay indoors till further notice, and you hear planes overhead, see military convoys out the windows. Radio and television services have all but shut down.
Imagine yourself living on an American air base in Turkey, and you learn there is a coup underway to topple the government. Both the State and Defense Departments are ordering evacuations of Americans, some to Germany, some back to America, some to Spain. The military member may go on duty; the family is rushed away to an uncertain location without much time to pack or plan. Your personal effects and furnishings are left in Turkey.
Imagine a school principal calling you and your sister to the office where your mother and a high ranking officer are waiting to tell you your father’s plane just went down in Afghanistan and that he did not survive.
Imagine your only child coming home in a flag-draped coffin, the son you had nursed and comforted in your arms so long ago, and now you will never see him again.
Imagine you are a teen whose father or mother has just been deployed to a war zone where the family cannot go, and it’s up to you to help with the younger kids and household management for the next few months.
Imagine you and your mother and your siblings are out on a tarmac to welcome home your father, the one you haven’t seen for more than two years, and he comes to you in a wheelchair without the legs you tried to keep up with back when he would run and play with you.
These are real life situations faced by members of America’s military families. A child of a soldier or airman, sailor or marine will pass through an average of five or six schools en route to graduation. A son or daughter will probably have lived in at least one foreign country by the third grade. Almost one-fourth of all military kids – “Brats” – enter first grade speaking a language other than English.
These compelling stories of heroism, courage, strength, and pride are collected and preserved by the Museum of the American Military Family (MAMF), the only museum in the country completely dedicated to the mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, spouses, and partners who have loved and supported a member of America’s armed forces.
MAMF was founded in 2011 by Dr. Circe Olson Woessner (daughter of the author) while her son was serving in Iraq and her husband had just retired from an Army career (during which he had also deployed to Middle Eastern and Haitian combat areas). The Woessners and their two sons had moved eighteen times during LTC Woessner’s service before settling in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Woessner was worried about her son in Iraq but noted that military wives and mothers are tough and brave and deserve recognition for their sacrifices and service. How about a museum, like those for specific battles, squadrons, ships, or military units. Not really. A few museums, like the Infantry Museum at Fort Benning, have a small gallery about Army family life, but they are generally military branch specific. “I’ll start one,” she said.
For four years MAMF was an on-line presence, collecting documents, artifacts, photos, documents, and first-hand stories from around the world and from every war, including the American civil war. A handful of volunteer board members managed to sort and catalog and keep books and get tax-exempt status and register with the state public regulations committee and oversee the safe-keeping of everything in temporary facilities, including Woessner’s garage. » Read more
