The COVID-19 pandemic has created some challenges at Jefferson City’s Museum of Missouri Military History. But they might not be the ones you expect.
Like many other museums, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to less visitors at Jefferson City’s Museum of Missouri Military History, but it has also kept the museum busy, as it is scrambling to accommodate the influx of new artifacts people have been donating.
“Surprisingly during covid it's been about once a week, once every other week. So even though we've been way down on our visitor-ship to the museum, people have been contacting us "hey I have this item or that item to share with your museum," so it's been pretty exciting” said Charles Machon, the museum’s director.
Machon has been overseeing receival operations. Since the pandemic they’ve received a variety of new artifacts from donors who did a bit of COVID-19 house cleaning.
“During the Covid time, behind us here in the WWII Europe case, we have the bomber jacket of a Missourian and a photo of him wearing it in WWII with his daughter. And it’s in amazing, amazing condition to be 80 years old and made out of leather, so we're very happy to have it,” Machon said.
When the museum first opened in 1999 its capacity was much smaller. With the help of the National Guard they have expanded. The guard provides pivotal maintenance support and the museum preserves the history of the guard.
“It's something that wouldn't be captured if we didn't have a museum here,” said Johnathan Klusmeyer, the Missouri National Guard’s public affairs officer.
Klusmeyer said the museum plays an essential role in preserving Missouri History and the work of the National Guard.
“We also have a responsibility to the citizens of our state, the state of Missouri, so anytime there is an emergency…the force of choice is the National Guard to step in and provide logistics and administrative support to our civilian partners,” Klusmeyer said,.
In addition to finding places for the new artifacts, the museum is working on a long term project to carefully unravel World War II blueprints discovered at Camp Crowder in Missouri.
“These original World War II blueprints were found in a warehouse down there and they’ve all been rolled kind of like ancient Egyptian scrolls,” Machon said.
While most states have military history museums of their own, Machon said Missouri’s museum is fortunate to have grown to the size it has.
“We have just in here more than 6,500 square foot of exhibit space plus 20-30 thousand square foot of outdoor exhibit space with aircraft, tanks, helicopters and things like that, so we are very fortunate to have a museum of this quality,” Machon said.
The museum is just outside of Jefferson City at the Ike Skelton Training Center and they are open Tuesday through Friday 8 AM to 5 PM and Saturday 10 AM to 5 PM