All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
This is Veterans Radio.
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I am Jim Fausone.
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Let's move on to our programs.
We want to welcome to Veterans Radio.
In the spotlight this month as a member of the Association of Michigan Military Organizations,
or AMO, the Michigan Heroes Museum, we're talking to its executive director, John Reiner.
John, welcome to Veterans Radio again.
Hello there.
How are you doing today?
We're doing great.
We're glad to have you on.
Just to remind our veteran radio listeners that Veterans Radio America has a partnership
with AMO to bring you a quick look at Michigan Military Organizations that support the history
of military service here in the state of Michigan.
We encourage you to visit AMO on Facebook and this particular organization by visiting
it this season.
John, let's talk about what's sort of unique about the Michigan Heroes Museum in Frank &
Mooth, Michigan.
With the Michigan Heroes Museum, we tell the stories of over 850 Michigan servicemen, women,
and astronauts.
They're amazing stories, whether Al Warden from Apollo 15, the All University of Michigan
flight crew, or Dwayne Hackney, the most decorated and listed airman ever, or Sergeant Major
Ken Rice out of the Marine Corps, who was POW, captured in baton, and survived the second
atomic bomb as he was in a coal mine working as a prisoner of war after the attack on Anagasaki.
We've just got amazing stories of our individuals from throughout Michigan, whether they were
born here, whether they just served at a base here, whether they lived in Michigan their
whole life other than their service to our country, or maybe they just retired here.
We tell the stories of those individuals and they are our truest heroes.
In the Michigan Heroes Museum has a long history.
Tell us how it started and how it got to where it is today.
Sure.
We've been in organization since November 1976, but the actual museum got started by
an amazing guy, Navy, Stan Bozic, before he joined the Navy and served during Korea.
He was actually starting maybe as early as 13 years old or so.
He and his brothers walk up and down the alleyways in Detroit area, in Metro Detroit area, and
see things that the World War II vets had brought home, whether it's their Navy duffels
or whatever.
Moms and wives were cleaning out the house and throwing that stuff away.
These guys had picked it up in their little red wagon quite literally and go and knock
on the door and try to find the servicemen or women that that belonged to and talk to
them and try to get their stories.
He really had a passion for that after he began to collect some of that stuff.
The brothers, they all just realized that it's so much more than just a collection of
things.
This is their histories.
It's an amazing part of world history that dovetails into specific Michigan personal
histories.
Well, it's one of those things when you go through a museum such as this, you realize
what your friends and neighbors or maybe the grandparents of your friends and neighbors
did in service of the country.
It's really pretty surprising, isn't it?
Absolutely.
We've got so many stories that people come in here.
We just had somebody come in here and recognize the last name is the same name as they had.
They got just thinking and they said, well, boy, I bet you he's a second or third.
A third cousin somewhere down the line.
He started trying to track his history back to this particular individual.
I'm confident that they're related somewhere.
But yeah, it's just quite amazing when we get somebody in here from Luddington or LaVonia
or Mackinaw or even above the Straits, they come in and they go, oh my gosh, you got somebody
from our town represented or from our county.
That's the thing.
People that have served our country, even though we're less than 1% of the population
serves nowadays today, they're still your hero next door.
The people that you never knew served or maybe you knew they served, but you didn't know
what they did.
We may have stories of people that you know or actually from your neck of the woods here
at our museum and I almost guarantee that we do.
And you tell not only the stories of these men, primarily men, but men and women who
served from all eras of combat, but you also tell their stories after they get out.
There's a Medal of Honor recipient who went on to be a doctor who doesn't want to be known
for what he did in the service, but he's a Medal of Honor recipient.
Yeah, so Dr. Furlong, he was at the time World War I.
He's the only Michigan Medal of Honor World War I out of the US Army.
And as he was in service, he has a young first lieutenant.
Here in the battle with a German French line, their unit, his captain is shot down in this
battle.
And they're about 100 yards from the trench and he orders one of his grenade ears to crawl
up through the barbed wire in the bomb craters and get as close as he can to the opposition
trenches there and try to throw grenades into render neutral the four Maxim machine guns
that they had set up above their trench.
And the grenade ear does that.
Over an hour or so, he gets close enough where he's able to start throwing the grenades
and he pulls the pins and throws them and Harold Furlong is back, like I said, about
100 yards away and he's watching as those foreign machine gunners in turn, those grenades
are getting awful close.
They stand up and jump down into the trenches so they can have more cover.
And once the fourth guy jumped into the trench, he jumped up and started running towards
the trench.
Now, when he realized that the end of the trench wasn't too far away, he actually ran
around the edge of the trench and he ran around behind the trench and he slid down there
and he waited for those gunners to show back up.
And after those grenades stopped going off, those machine gunners crawled back up into
their Maxims and they started returning firing upon his men.
And as they were doing that, they didn't pay attention that somebody had gotten around
behind them and he was able to work his way forward and fire four times, eliminating those
men, those Germans that were manning those Maxims, they couldn't hear him.
They were making too much noise themselves.
And he then stood up and he walked to the edge of the trench and he pointed his rifle
down the trench and those 20 men left in that trench all surrendered to that one man.
But this is a great Medal of Honor story in a great Michigander who went on to become
a medical doctor, delivered thousands of babies.
And you tell that story and I want to get you to where I saw it because I think, tell
us about how the last year, the pandemic has nudged, encouraged, forced the museum to get
some of its stories out, its educational efforts out to a wider audience who couldn't visit
during the last year.
Yeah, exactly.
So we've tried Facebook Live videos.
We've done some of that.
We've done some YouTube videos where we've had actually Frank Beckman narrated the video
that I believe you probably saw with stories of Christina Hammett Cook, our astronaut from
the state of Michigan.
They're currently serving most recent astronaut who went up into space, spent 11 months up
there and was the longest female ever to fly American female to fly in space.
And she was part of the first all female spacewalk where she and Jessica Meir both went out on
a spacewalk together.
We also told the story of Dwayne Hattney, the most decorated and listed airman, and
Christina Hammett Cook.
We got a grant from a local service organization where they underwrote the cost for doing that
video.
They also allowed us to offer that video to classrooms and others that wanted to see what
it is that we have here at the museum and maybe try to teach some of the lessons we teach
in the museum without being able to visit the museum.
Well, the Michigan's Heroes Museum has been operating since 1976.
They had a couple of name changes over time, but it's always been housed in the greater
Frankenmuth area.
So if you're going up to Frankenmuth, build in time to stop into the museum.
We're talking to its executive director, John Reidner.
John, tell folks what your website is.
So our website is www.miheros.org, so MyHeroes.org with the Mi being the Mi of Michigan.
John, there are 850 stories here.
When people come in and you get back to, maybe it's next year when schools can come back
in and do classroom tours, what are some of the favorite things that they like to see
and do?
So I think what people are drawn to about our museum is that we tell their stories about
them, right?
So you can go to nearly any museum and you can find out information on weapons.
You can find out information on weapons platforms and tanks and planes and living conditions
and battles and things like that.
We tell those stories, but only as they relate to a Michigan service man or woman.
So the way the story is told is a little different than most museums.
Grass Lake Museum also does a little bit.
I mean, they do a lot of storytelling also like we do, but those type of military museums
are really rare.
Most of the times you hear and see the things that were used and people are just starting
to understand that the individual histories are what's really important.
So we've made sure that that's our number one focus.
We've got items around the museum that we don't label because we want people looking
at the individual stories.
Well you've got a great executive board and board members at large and advisory board
members and staff.
I mean, it's really well run organization.
But tell us why this kind of regional museum is important to, you know, or should be important
to the younger generation?
Well, you know, as people nowadays, like I mentioned earlier, only approximately 1% of
the people serve.
And a lot of people, you know, their grandfather served, their grandmothers maybe, great-grandfathers
and things like that, they themselves hadn't served.
And they hadn't had the ability to understand what that service means.
What we'd like to do, and the rest of the ammo museums also would like to do, is let
people know what it is that people that had served had went through, whether they're going
up and touring the USS Henson, or they're over in Grasslake or East Point or over in
Jackson or Muskegon, that they can go to a local military museum there and they can learn
about just a little segment about what the service men and women that they know may have
went through and a little bit about their experience.
So we've got some amazing military museums here in Michigan.
And that's the reason why AMO is just such a unique organization where we've all decided
to work together in order to tell these stories and make sure that these histories are not
forgotten.
Well, it's so important and nowadays there's just not enough time, whether it's in grade
school or high school, to teach this history.
And even in college there's not these kind of history programs that really tell what
service is about and what the sacrifices that these Michigan residents went through, whether
it be in Korea, Vietnam, World War II, World War I.
Is the museum also beginning to think about how it displays and tells the stories of Michiganders
who've been over in the Gulf Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Yeah, so we do have a war on terror gallery.
Kind of interesting.
We're just now starting to get the stories of the Vietnam veterans.
It took them over 50 years to realize that, hey, you know what?
What I did was important also.
Most of those individuals until the last five years or so, they didn't think they were deserving.
And that's what we're finding with our war on terror stories right now.
Most of the people that have served, they say, hey, you know what?
You got up the real heroes, the people who perished in the line of duty.
Those stories are the ones that need to be told.
But I don't care if you're a clerk typist or a cook or frontline battle company or just
what, guess what?
We want to tell your story here because there are so many people that have served that you
will represent.
And your story will dovetail with theirs.
And so many families that can learn about people's service through your story that we
would love to tell it here at our museum.
Well, I think that's a great point because so many of us serve.
But we're not at the tip of the spear.
We're a support team.
We're logistics.
We were the ship drivers as the Marines called the Navy.
Or the flying the planes.
So all those stories are important because it also educates the families of the kids
who want to join the service.
Maybe that's what my kid wants to do.
He wants to be a drone piloter and cyber intelligence.
And he's going to be fine.
He's not going to be at the tip of the spear.
So those are great stories to tell.
But this isn't easy to do and it isn't easy to keep it alive as long as you have up in
Frank and Muth.
John, how is this funded?
So we are funded exclusively private donations and corporate donations right now.
We don't receive any state monies currently.
And not that we wouldn't.
We just don't.
And we appreciate the individuals that support our museum, understand what it is that we're
doing and help us out as well as every ammo organization.
I'll tell you what, there's no museum that's going to make it unless they're subsidized
somehow.
And you're never going to make it on just your admission.
So our subsidies come from our loyalist fans and the individuals who understand what it
is that we're doing and want to help us continue the legacy that we've begun here.
And we're talking to John Ryder, who's the executive director of Michigan Heroes Museum
up in Frank and Muth, Michigan.
John, if somebody's out there and says, man, this is a worthy cause, I'd like to support
it a little bit.
Maybe it's a business in a corporation who says, I want to get behind this a little bit.
How do they do that?
So they can call me directly at the museum at 989-652-8005.
I'll give that number again here in just a little bit.
But they can also go to our website and we have a little information there about donating.
And once again, that's at www.miheroes.org or like I said, call me at 989-652-8005.
My name is John Ryder.
And I'll be glad to help talk to you and we'll see if we can work together.
And the same is true with individual stories.
If somebody has a story they'd like us to tell here at the museum.
We would be glad to tell the stories of Michigan servicemen and women.
And we're always on the lookout for new stories that we can tell.
And so if you know a veteran or you have a family member that served and that stuff is
no better hands than with the family, right?
That story is loved and cherished by them.
But eventually the family generally will lose touch with great-grandfather or something.
Maybe not understand the story as much as the earlier generations had.
And that's where the museum can come in and help make sure that story never gets lost.
That's right.
It should not be forgotten.
And the Michigan Heroes Museum is a 501C3.
So if you'd like to donate, give John a call at the museum or go to the website and reach
out there.
John, as we come to the end here, as people begin thinking about, hey, I want to do something
this spring.
You know, the family has been vaccinated.
We want to do a day field trip, something like that.
Is the museum open?
Tell us what spring and summer looks like for the museum.
Yeah, so we've been open since early June last year when the governor opened back up
the state.
We've remained open since then.
And we absolutely would love to have your family or your group stop into the museum
where we will happily greet you, tell you a little bit about the museum, allow you to
explore it yourself or accompany you as you go through the museum.
And we just ask that everybody follows whatever is recommended at the state by at the time
that you stop in.
I know the governor has laid out a plan for relaxing the regulatory restrictions.
And we're going to comply with what we're asked to do.
And we're also going to ask that our public visitors remain just as safe as they can and
that they don't get themselves and their loved ones sick as well.
Well this is one of these steps that on something like TripAdvisor gets five stars all the time.
And you can bribe the rest of the family, maybe with some chicken or with some Christmas
decorations.
But make sure you stop in at Michigan Heroes Museum.
John Reiner, Executive Director, we want to thank you for spending a little time with
us today on Veterans Radio.
Thank you.
And I want to thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio today.
I am Jim Fausone.
It's been a pleasure to be your host.
I'm a Veterans Disability Lawyer at Legal Help for Veterans.
And you can reach us at 800-693-4800 or legalhelpforveterans.com on the web.
You can follow Veterans Radio on Facebook and listen to its podcasts and internet radio
shows by going to veteransradio.net.
And until next time, you are dismissed.
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And until next time, you are dismissed.
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