| Event: | Grandbury US Veterans Museum - Memorial Weekend |  Curtesy of Hugh H. |
| Date: | 26-28 May, 2012 | |
| Location: | Grandbury, Texas |
Last year, several of us, including Sue, Jennifer, Tom Egan and I attended the Granbury U. S. Veteran's Museum's first annual event and we were asked to come back this year to help bring awareness and help increase donations to the new museum and so we did.
The U.S. Veterans Museum and the City of Granbury put on quite a show for their Memorial Day Weekend Celebration to support the Granbury U.S. Veterans Museum. This is a first of this type of event for Granbury. If you are not familiar with Granbury, it is county seat of Hood County, located southwest of Fort Worth, where the damn built on the Brazos river in 1969 formed Lake Granbury, a long, narrow lake which flows through the city.
There were basically two separate events planned for the weekend: First, the Field of Flags event set up along highway 377 which ran Friday through Sunday and started with a candlelight tribute to patriots and also included military static displays, flyovers, live entertainment, military art show, and second, the first Granbury Memorial Day Parade, downtown around the Granbury courthouse square featuring the 1945 V-J Day Times Square Kissing Sailor, Glenn McDuffie.
Sue, Jennifer, Tom Egan and I headed out Friday afternoon. Upon arrival in Granbury, we made a quick stop at the Pig Iron City, where they have a large selection of military and police insignia, shoulder patches, rank, a lot of canvas goods, uniforms and various other military items. For our WWII medical impression, we found a jerry can for water, a laundry bag and side-zip duffel bag. When I mentioned we were getting ready to set up the WWII display, the owner was so enthusiastic he gave us the jerry can!! The longer we spent in town, the more folks we found excited about the museum events and what we were doing. We also dropped by again on our way out of town.
We set up the 3rd army 326th Medical Aid Station (we now have signage) in the trees and a ways away the guys set up a US Army Viet Nam camp, complete with a fire pit and a 5 foot water moccasin. Re-enactment battles were planned for WWII for Saturday and Viet Nam for Sunday supported by pyrotechnics, but there were not enough participants to conduct the battles, so they were cancelled.
It was very windy and started out cool enough, but by 3:00 it was HOT. With the cancellation of the re-enactments, we dismantled the camps by 6pm Saturday.
On Sunday, the parade though historic downtown Granbury began at 10:00 and went down Pearl Street, around the courthouse square and back down Bridge street. The parade was led off by a car carrying Glenn McDuffie and our own WWII Army nurses, Sue and Jen Hall. There were many cars and we did manage to include 4 military vehicles. The parade was followed up with a trip to the Museum where Glenn McDuffie autographed copies of his famous 1945 V-J Day Time Square kissing-the-nurse picture.
MVPA Vehicles:
John S '43 GPW Swansong
Tom H Jeep "Uncle Bob"
Hugh & Sue H '43 GPW Tugger
also...
the Museum has an Viet Nam era U. S. Army M725 Kaiser ambulance
and one Granbury resident brought a newly restored M35 with "GI JOE" Texas plates - a very good restoration
and another resident drove a Humvee.
WWII Attendees:
Hugh & Sue H - 3rd Army Medical
Chad and Debbie S - German Medical (+friends)
Viet Nam Attendees: (I apologize I don't know everyone's names)
Tom Egan
Lynn L
Jacob N
Javi N
Dillion
Jim
and friends.
The Museum is located at 601 Thorpe Road
The folks there are:
Tom G, curator
Cordell H, curator
Lawrence W, WWII Navy veteran
Brad C
Gail J
and many others.
We had a good time with folks that asked a lot of interesting questions and shared their adventures with us.
By the way, according to Jennifer, her favorite part of the weekend, was as a U.S. Army Nurse, she skinned the water moccasin and brought the trophy home. What is a father to do?!?!?!?
I just finished adding photos and captions to the shared website, so take another look if you visited it earlier. https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=108428222961513896276&target=ALBUM&id=5747718714425690817&authkey=Gv1sRgCIuDxrvx7-GBzwE&feat=email Best regards to all our friends, Hugh, Sue and Jen
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 Chad Sloan Barry Sandlin |
 Tom Hill David Ozee |