The Broomfield Veterans Memorial Museum, 12 Garden Center, sits in a tidy, low-slung brick building between the offices of an orthodontist and an orthopedic surgeon. It was, until recently, not much to speak of, just one room tucked in a corner along with some mental-health offices.
They made the best of it, and then the medical offices relocated and, earlier this year, the city said to the veterans: OK, the space is yours, rent-free.
Wednesday, as the nation honored its veterans, the people of Broomfield did the same with the grand opening of the new-and-improved eight-room Veterans Memorial Museum.
No official ribbon-cutting marked the occasion, but there were flags on the lawn and coffee and cookies and, of course, stories. There was Paul J. Murphy, chewing on an unlit cigar, sitting in a wheelchair in the room devoted largely to the USS Indianapolis.
He was sleeping on board when a Japanese submarine torpedoed it. It sank, dumping hundreds of men into the water. They weren’t rescued for four days. Of about 1,200 men, a little more than 300 survived.
“Can you believe he was in that water and didn’t see a shark?” one of Murphy’s friends says.
“I felt them,” Murphy says. “They bumped me, but sharks don’t like Irishmen.”
“You were on the Indianapolis?” Walter Kois says, overhearing the conversation. “I was on Saipan. We lost a lot of Marines there.” His voice breaks, and he turns away.
When I talk to Kois later, he tells me he was Army infantry, 1944 to 1947, and tears start running down his cheeks. It’s the day. It’s the place with all its memorabilia. He’s ambushed by memory.
It’s a veterans museum, yes, but it has also been an eight-year labor of love. In 2001, five men, friends, World War II vets, gathered at Vic Boccard’s house. “Guys,” Boccard said. “What do you think? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a military museum?”
You have to understand one thing, Boccard tells me. “Broomfield is a unique place in many ways.” Most of the men at his house that day had moved to the town in the late ’50s. The population was booming at the time and, Boccard says, many new residents were veterans with young families. “We were proud of our service to our community, to our nation.”
Back in 2001, he was involved in a project to record veterans’ stories. With almost every interview, an old soldier or sailor would say he still had his uniform or a German helmet or a rifle.
“I figured we had enough stuff for a museum,” Boccard says. “So I got the guys together and we formed a museum committee.”
“We left Vic’s house that day and we didn’t have a dime and we didn’t have a roof over our head,” Bob Seeber says. “We had nothing but Vic’s idea.”
Yes and no, Boccard says. He may have put the idea of a museum honoring veterans into words, but it was always there, in the town’s very bones. The museum simply would not be, he and the others say, without the support of the town’s leaders and all the people who donated time and labor and money to see history remembered.
You can find, in this museum, medic Robert Rudzinksi’s helmet and gas mask and knife, and the photos of Hubert Peters, staff sergeant. You can find a small book with a yellow paper cover reading, “Handbook for Civilians Just in Case Atom Bombs Fall.”
You can find a telegram dated Jan. 1, 1919, from Cpl. A.J. O’Brien. “Mrs. A.J. O’Brien. Arrived safe feeling fine will be home soon. A.J. O’Brien.”
To see all this now, with the shootings at Fort Hood just a few days past, with the president deciding whether to send thousands more men to Afghanistan, is to have a sense of past and present colliding. It is sobering, even with all the “congratulations” and “it looks beautiful” compliments ringing out.
Rick Holtz, Army, 1954-74, looks at O’Brien’s belongings and tells me he remembers World War II because his father went to war, his mother to a factory and he to a farm to live with his grandparents. “I was 6 or 7 years old, and I missed my mom and dad.” And then, he, too, chokes back tears.
There are rooms devoted to World Wars I and II, to Vietnam and Korea, to the Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq. These last are the sparsest, and the hope is that these veterans — and more female vets — will come forward to tell their stories and perhaps to serve on the board. “We’re all in our 80s now,” Boccard says, “and we want to pass this to the younger people.”
“This will be our legacy,” Boccard says, this museum, all that it holds, all that it reveals, not simply about war, but about duty and sacrifice and service.
Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
