Our portal into the past
Museum LIFE D WORDS BY HANK MURPHY
As people in and around Greenville strive to build a better future , they ’ re working from a space molded by its past , a past where the city ’ s character , its physical attributes , and its essential qualities were forged .
Nowhere is it easier to appreciate Greenville ’ s and Hunt County ’ s past than at the Audie Murphy / American Cotton Museum , where artifacts and re-creations co-mingle with the names and faces of people who will live on through the annals of history .
The museum offers a portal through time where one can walk past the shops of a 1920s-era Main Street , view a wreath made of human hair , examine a revolutionary Cannon Ball safe , marvel at a 1906 Cadillac and see the muscular steel encased engine that once powered the world ’ s largest cotton compress .
But it ’ s a place that also connects you with some of our nation ’ s most highly accomplished people – people born or raised right here in Hunt County .
The most obvious example is the museum ’ s namesake , World War II hero and movie actor Audie Murphy , who was born in tiny Kingston and grew up in Celeste . Before joining the Army in 1942 , Murphy also spent time living in Greenville . It was here at the old post office – now The Landmark on Lee building – that he enlisted in the Army as a scrawny teenager after his sister forged his birth certificate .
Murphy would go on to serve in World War II ’ s Mediterranean and European theaters and become the most decorated soldier in the history of the nation . Murphy received every combat award for valor available from the U . S .
WINTER 2022 Greenville Life 7