Veterans Museum has Clear Mission Objectives
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Photo by Joe McGarity
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The Fantom Penguin recently visited the Northern California Veterans Museum and Heritage Center near the airport in Redding. Christine Sullivan began with a brief history of this painting by a veteran whose duty as a shopkeeper did not allow him to be issued a weapon.
“He said they always felt kind of naked and vulnerable during the war and indeed he did. And so when he got back, he has a great deal of PTSD and a lot of troubles with Viet Nam and so he’s painted a whole lot of different kinds of paintings to represent his feelings and emotions at that time, which has helped him to learn to live with his PTSD in general.”
The museum currently displays artifacts and uniforms from every historical period of American military history and represents every branch of service.
“We tell this from the veteran’s point of view and from no other view. The media is not represented very well here, although we do have papers and documents from the media, that’s not our major presence. Our major presence is the veterans themselves.”
“This part of the museum right now is six thousand square feet, but the main part of the museum is across the street from where we’re at now and that’s a seventeen acre campus. The City of Redding has been kind to donate us seventeen acres, on that seventeen acres we’ll have a seven-acre Liberty Park and in that Liberty Park we’ll have a memorial chapel, bell-tower and a 250-person amphitheater. The main museum is a 130,000 square foot state-of-the-art museum. It has a restaurant, event center and then we’ll also have a live hanger as well on the campus so that we can bring in live aircraft and put them on static display.”
“We need volunteers to do graphic artwork. We have a lot of stuff in the museum that has no nomenclature, so we would like somebody to come onboard and help us with that. We’re always looking for docents. I could use anybody that has any kind of background in military history.”
The Fantom Penguin 
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