Museum honors veterans, accepts military memorabilia donations with local ties

WARSAW — Just inside the door of the Duplin County Veterans Memorial Museum is one of the museum’s most important items, according to Museum Curator Earl Rouse: It’s a thick, loose-leaf notebook containing the Roll of Honor, an ever-growing list of U.S. military veterans who lived in Duplin County at some point in their lives. It’s important to Rouse that the list be as complete as possible, and to that end, he spends 10 to 15 hours a week, scouring online obituaries and cemetery records, searching for men and women whose names deserve to be added to the Roll. He estimates that when he began working with the museum approximately 10 years ago, the list had no more than 2700 names; it now contains 10,725. He figures there should be about 15,000 total on the Roll — so he continues to look.

And sometimes the names find him. A visitor to the museum will look through the Roll of Honor and not see the name of a family member who served, thereby offering up the information to Rouse, who will dutifully — and appreciatively — record it.

It’s no surprise that Rouse is so intent on recognizing all Duplin County veterans; after all, he is, himself, a Duplin County native and a veteran, having served in the Coast Guard during the Vietnam War. With his ties to the county and his experience in the military, he’s able to explain exhibits and answer questions in ways others might not be able to.

The museum is located at 119 E. Hill Street, in a historic home built by L. P. Best in 1894, and when visitors first arrive, Rouse likes to tell them a bit about the beautifully restored house. Best moved from the house (he went to Mebane, where he founded Craftique Furniture), but it remained in the family and eventually fell on hard times. “Back in the early ‘90s, this whole west side of the house collapsed, and the town condemned it,” Rouse explains. The owner couldn’t afford to rebuild it, so she gifted it to Warsaw Presbyterian Church, which stands directly across the street. According to Rouse, church members squabbled a bit about what to do — with some firmly in the camp of wanting to tear it down, while others were adamant about saving it — but a couple of ladies in particular made a big enough fuss about wanting to see the old house returned to its former glory that “it got a lot of attention out of Raleigh, and Preservation North Carolina stepped in and says, ‘If you will re-build the house, restore it, we will assist you..’” And that’s what happened. The house was restored and the museum opened in the mid-90s.

Once Rouse has welcomed visitors with this background information, he may offer a guided tour (if, for example, a group has young children that would benefit from hearing stories and explanations), but often, he says, “I just let ‘em mosey around. If they have any questions, the way the house is made…if you’re upstairs, I can hear you talking, so if you have a question, you don’t have to scream it out.”

All of the museum’s many artifacts (uniforms, photos, and a wide range of military items) have been donated, usually, Rouse notes, by children cleaning out the homes of their parents who served in the military and are now deceased. “I get a lot of calls, ‘Can you haul this stuff off? We don’t want it,’” he says.

In some instances, it’s memorabilia that was once obviously treasured: photos, medals and paperwork that have been professionally matted and framed.

At other times, though, Rouse says that people “have no clue” how valuable their items are (in terms of historical significance).

He recalls getting a call from a woman in Kenansville who told him she had a trunk she wanted him to see. “So I went over to her house, and I says, ‘Where’s the trunk? I’d like to take a look at it,’” he remembers. “She said, ‘It’s in the trash can over yonder, somebody unloaded it.” The woman, in fact, knew nothing at all about the trunk; she’d just spotted it in a dumpster.

Her fortuitous find turned out to be a wooden trunk that had been issued to Joseph Allen Hawkins by the U.S. Army Medical Corps, during World War I. The contents of the trunk included a U.S. Army uniform, sewing kit, shaving kit, gas mask, canteen, Bible, prayer books, numerous YMCA pamphlets, a photo of Hawkins, and other items. To a museum curator, it was a treasure trove; to someone else, it had simply been trash.

Usually, all items displayed in the museum have a known Duplin County connection; however, in this instance, “We cannot connect him back to Duplin County yet,” Rouse reports. “We think the reason [the trunk] ended up in Duplin County is he had kin folk that was here.”

Rouse (who served active duty from July 1965 to July 1971 and reserve duty from August 1972 to December 1988) has donated items from his own military service to the museum, including numerous photos from when he was shipboard in the Pacific Ocean and when he was on land duty on Guam and Yap Island.

At every turn in the museum, another bit of history awaits. On one table sits a kit — containing a cross, two candlesticks, A Prayer Book for Soldiers and Sailors, and a tray with communion cups — that belonged to James Harrell Blackmore, an Army chaplain during World War II.

On a counter sits a box of C-rations, canned meals that were issued in the military during World War II and the Korean War. Labeling on the individual boxes provides insight into what the soldiers ate: beans with frankfurter chunks in tomato sauce, beef slices and potatoes with gravy, and chopped ham and eggs. Rouse shares that two of the boxes had to be removed because the contents started leaking; inside those boxes, he discovered that each contained “a little six-pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes.”

Of course, there are many, many photographs throughout the museum, and Rouse is always looking to add more. In the same way that people are invited to share the names of Duplin County veterans to add to the Roll of Honor, Rouse also invites people to donate a photo of a local veteran (un-framed is fine).

Always, the museum is looking for ways to improve. A new elevator was installed during the last couple of years, and Rouse is now talking with someone who is interested in assisting with grant-writing, in hopes of attaining funds to purchase hermetically-sealed glass cases in which to display (and protect) military uniforms.

He offers an estimate of 700 to 800 when asked how many visitors the museum sees a year, noting that it is popular not only with veterans and history aficionados, but also with both homeschool and public-school students.

Admission to the museum is free, although donations are accepted. It is open on Thursdays and Fridays, 1-4 p.m., and other times by appointment by calling 910-296-4122. This is also the number to call if anyone wishes to inquire about donating items or adding names to the Roll of Honor.