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The History of
The creation of the HEARTS Veterans Museum of Texas is a remarkable story of a patriotic gesture turned into a moment of inspiration and nurtured with an overwhelming grassroots effort into a full-fledged museum honoring the service of the American veteran.
From a Display in an Antique Shop...
The Museum traces its origins to 1993 when Charlotte Oleinik placed a Veterans Day display honoring Huntsville
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native, Brigadier General Ray Lynch, in the window of the Bluebonnet Square Antiques Shop.
By 1995, Charlotte was a member of a committee that organized the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. At the request of a history teacher at Mance Park Middle School, Janet McMillan, local veterans involved in the celebration spoke to her students about their experiences in war and the military, illustrating their talks wth memorabilia and artifacts from their collections. The veterans made also several other presentations to large groups of students at the Huntsville Public Library.
To a Traveling School Exhibit...
After the year of celebration, Charlotte Oleinik, joined by World War II veteran Charles Davis, continued presentations in Walker County schools, transporting and setting up exhibits at each school.
In 1999, Oleinik and Davis placed a small exhibit of the Time Line of Wars in the Twentieth Century at West Hill Shopping Mall in Huntsville. By this time the memorabilia and artifacts used by veterans in their presentations had grown to the point that it was impossible to use much of it in a school setting. The West Hill Shopping Mall offered a vacant space in the Mall to house a museum for the artifacts.
Charlotte and Charlie’ s presentation was so compelling that soon they were asked to present the same program to other classes and other schools.
As word spread among area veterans, their collection of military artifacts and memorabilia used in their presentations began to grow.
Eventually, the collection outgrew their ability to travel with it, and they recognized the need for a permanent location for them.
The idea for the HEARTS Veterans Museum of Texas as a hands-on, living history museum was born.
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