Stolen patriotism irks museum boss
Photos by LOREN BENOIT/Hagadone News Network Richard Le Francis gestures to a 10th Mountain unit display at the Pappy Boyington Veterans Museum on Tuesday. The military-history-rich museum at 1600 W. Wyoming Ave. recently had an ammo box stolen.
A leather U.S. Army Air Force jacket hangs in a gallery among other mementos at the Pappy Boyington Veterans Museum on Tuesday.
Instead of an ammo box, Richard Le Francis has now placed a large rock next to the Pappy Boyington Veterans Museum sign to weigh it down. The Museum is open Sunday to Tuesday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
HAYDEN — The ammo box wasn’t exactly a priceless war relic.
“It had zero value,” conceded Richard Le Francis.
And its theft didn’t send Le Francis into full-fledged fury, either.
“I wasn’t upset so much as flabbergasted,” he said.
But that a military memento would be stolen from the Pappy Boyington Veterans Museum — on the Fourth of July, of all days — still had the museum director shaking his head on Tuesday.
“My first thought was 'what sort of a moron, on the Fourth of July, would steal an ammo box full of rocks?'” said Le Francis, who had used the box to prop up the museum’s parking lot sign on a windy Monday. “A box of rocks. That’s the metaphor; this thief was dumb as a box of rocks.”
The museum, at 1600 W. Wyoming Ave., is rich in military history, but not so much on cash. Even losing an ammo box from the ‘70s or ‘80s feels a little bit like stolen patriotism, Le Francis agreed. But he and several devout volunteers march forward undaunted.
Attendance at the museum, which is open 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sundays through Tuesdays, was just 35 the first year it opened in 2012, Le Francis said.
However, it climbed to about 450 last year and has already reached that number halfway through 2016.
Operating on volunteer power and $5 admissions, museum staff takes nothing for granted. Le Francis anchored the parking lot sign Tuesday with the same large rock he’d used before the weighted ammo box.
“They might steal my rock now,” he said, but at least he was smiling when he said it.
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Museum information: https://pappyboyingtonveteransmuseum.org