Museum Remembers Forgotten Veterans

RIO GRANDE — “When a Vietnam veteran dies, my purpose is to save everything the guys brought back because otherwise it will go into a yard sale or a dump and be gone forever,” said Thomas Collins, president and founder of Forgotten Warriors Vietnam Museum. “Cape May County has 19 men that died in Vietnam and this museum will be dedicated to them when it’s all done.”
Ultimately, a granite stone and flagpoles will be placed outside the museum. Collins will go to the Vietnam Veteran’s Wall in Washington D.C. and trace the names of the 19 who lost their lives in the war.
He will bring those back and bury the tracings at the stone. Collins said he feels like that brings the men back to this county.
A case in the museum, currently operating from a donated mobile home, displays casket flags given to the museum. Collins said they sometimes come from the grandchildren of veterans who do not know what to do with the flags after the death of their grandparents.
All the flags bear names except one, which was left on the steps of the museum with no identification. He said he refuses to put the flags away in a closet as some museums do.
“The Vietnam veterans should be displayed and not put in a room somewhere and locked away,” said Collins.
The museum raised and spent $30,000 for building materials to construct its own building.
Collins said they did not take into consideration windows and doors, which will cost $5,000. If funding is found, the museum will have a grand opening in the spring, said Collins
Collins served in Vietnam as a door gunner on a helicopter in 1967-1968.
When he brings artifacts to schools, he asks the students, “What do you know about Vietnam.”
“Ninety percent of the kids say ‘what is that?’” said Collins. “Vietnam has always been put in a closet somewhere, stuck behind a door and the door closed.”
Vietnam veterans were not welcomed home when they returned from the war.
Collins said as he left an airport terminal near Travis Air Force Base in California, still in uniform, said he was spat upon and was hit with cans and stones. He said Vietnam veterans today are reluctant to talk about their experiences because no one wants to hear it.
“Everybody stores it inside but with another Vietnam vet you can talk,” he said.
Museum started in 2001 in a small room of the non-profit Naval Air Station Wildwood Museum with Thomas Collins, his wife Theresa, Gary Playford and Lou Vito.
Collins brought his artifacts and more and more vets brought artifacts. Everything was moved into a trailer that could be towed with a pickup truck and taken to area schools, he said.
The county Freeholders offered a lease to the Forgotten Vietnam Veterans Museum of a 17,500 square feet plot of land on airport property for $1 per year.
Grande Woods Mobile Home Park donated a used mobile home, which currently houses the museum, which Collins gutted and area residents donated 21 display cases.