I've got a couple of museums as clients and they
are working hard to get oral histories of veterans. They can only
accept so many artifacts so those with a detailed history are
intrinsicly more valuable.

Our museum has hundreds of thousands of originaly photos, but we still manage
to surprise ourselves on occasion - today, I found a 5x7 of an odd little
biplane with a mid-1920s date stamp and the name "Plywood Special". The
indistinct pilot was just warming the lil thing up to go for a flight.

I handed the photo to the man that painstakingly digitizes the never ending
stream of photos that get donated to us, and his jaw went slack - only a week
ago, he had found and scanned a photo of the same aircraft, fifteen minutes
later, after Charles Lindbergh crashed it! We compared the miniature US flag
stuck in the wing brace wires and its a match; a previously unknown photo of
our man Chas, just before he earned admittance to the Caterpiller Club.

"This is dad's uniform and he served in the
Marines during the Chosin withdrawl" is more valuable than a 1950's
Marine uniform.

What I hate is that every Luftwaffe hat becomes "Adolf Gallands" and every
brown pair of riding boots gets claimed to have been Rommels. That part gets
old..

Anyone interested in getting into veteran's registries please contact
me. No, not associated with AWL.

Good! Obviously

The group I'm working with closely is
preserving the history of the 5 Sullivan brothers.


Good on you. Five true heroes from America's past - definitely worth
preserving.

v/r
Gordon
====(A+C====
USN SAR

Donate your memories - write a note on the back and send your old photos to a
reputable museum, don't take them with you when you're gone.