Greater Middletown Military Museum

GMMMorning Middletown!
Greater Middletown Military Museum, Middletown
December 2023

Connecticut museum visit #515.

As you read this page, keep in mind that this large museum has plans to expand quite a bit. Once funding is secured – largely through private donations and not just grants like the more well known museums get – they already know exactly what they want to do.

And if that happens, this place will vault up pretty high in the non-existent Museums of Connecticut rankings.

Because it’s already quite expansive, well presented, and downright impressive… especially considering it almost exclusive focuses on Greater Middletown Veterans and their contributions to war efforts and society.

The museum, as is often the case, took a long time to come to fruition.

In late 2002, a group of Middletown area veterans got together to begin the process of forming a military museum as a tribute to all veterans and to preserve the rich military history of local veterans, their units and the military history of the local area.

The group was purposely comprised of members from all branches of the services. They secured non-profit status and a decade later, they found a place.

A place which was quickly sold to a church and then to the city for a parking lot.

The Museum received funds from the state and the city to build a new building and in 2015 signed an agreement to do just that in Veterans Park. Then a year later, the city moved the museum further into the park near a Trees of Honor memorial because that just made sense. (It is, however, no longer something anyone is going to happen by, notice, and visit. It is deep in the recesses of the park.)

Annnnnd in 2019, the 3,000 square foot museum opened. There are a couple things on the way into the museum worth noting.

One, down at the Trees of Honor that pays special homage to Connecticut’s fallen service members who died during the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, is good ol’ Sergeant Stubby. His story is one of the best Connecticut stories there is, so he certainly worth a moment of your time.

The other outside display is a lot harder to miss: The Secret Guerilla Unit Monument, a Huey helicopter that served in combat areas during the Vietnam War. “Combat areas.” Yeah. Not in Vietnam, but in Laos. These veterans absolutely deserve to be honored.

Special Guerrilla Unit veterans, who served under the direction of U.S. intelligence agencies during the Vietnam War, are in the process of getting this designated a national memorial. During the war, the CIA recruited, trained and paid Hmong and Laotian soldiers as Special Guerrilla Units. They embarked on missions to rescue downed American pilots and fought for U.S. interests in Southeast Asia, in what became known as the secret war inside Laos.

Let’s go inside.

I was immediately greeted by a docent who first asked if I had served. I have not served. She had not served either, but pretty much everyone in her family has. Her appreciation for our veterans was clear, as was her knowledge on the museum’s exhibits and displays. I was going to be given a guided tour whether I liked it or not and, as it turned out, I liked it. My guide was pretty darn great and added tons of color and background stories I’d otherwise not have known.

(Yes, I realize that’s the entire function of a docent/guide, and as they are all usually retired volunteers, you never know what you’re going to get.)

The museum features items and stories from every war anyone from the Middletown area participated in. That means it starts with the Revolutionary War. A cannonball from Dorcester, Massachusetts that caused my docent to blush, as it was not from the Greater Middletown area.

That gun above is an 1817 muzzle-loaded flintlock rifle. Yeah, I skipped from the Revolution until after the War of 1812, but the museum doesn’t. Well, it kind of does in that its artifacts from the beginning of our country are a bit sparse, but that’s not knock on them at all.

I was taught a bit about local gun manufacturers and how Simeon North’s improvements on gun manufacture and design were integral to the growth and success of our military. Three Middletown gun guys produced more guns for our military than anyone else, leading to a visit from President James Monroe.

Connecticut was the top spot for precision weapons manufacture 200 years ago just as we still are today.

The museum’s layout is in chronological order and there is a lot of items here. But it’s not the items themselves, they all seem to have interesting stories attached to them. Like this New York Times reporting on the assassination of President Lincoln:

You’re going to have to visit yourself to get the story, as I forget the details. It was found in someone’s attic I think. My takeaway is how tiny the font is and how the Times truly was “all the news that’s fit to print.” My word. It would take an hour to read page one.

Let’s jump up to WWI. Hey, there’s our friend Sergeant Stubby!

If you don’t know his story, he was a New Haven stray smuggled to Europe and became a sort of mascot to a local outfit in the trenches. He was able to detect gas attacks before humans and is credited with saving many American lives.

There’s a movie about him and everything.

From WWI onward, the museum’s collection is extensive. WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War. I’m sure they’ll build out the “War on Terror,” or whatever it’ll be known as in the future, displays. With each war, there’s usually a cabinet or two or artifacts and then some other items of local interest. Like letters from the Argonne to nervous wives in Middletown.

Or how about the story of Max Corvo?

A native of Sicily, Corvo came to the United States at age 10 and eventually became publisher of The Middletown Bulletin, which he founded in 1949 as a weekly Italian- and English-language tabloid.

After Pearl Harbor, he volunteered for the United States Army and, stationed in Fort Lee, VA, drew up plans for operations behind enemy lines in the Mediterranean region during World War II. His work impressed senior officers, and he was transferred to the Italian Secret Intelligence branch of the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The branch was able to smuggle hundreds of agents behind the lines, supply partisan fighters, and maintain a liaison between Allied field commands and Italy’s first post-Fascist Government. Corvo rose to the rank of major and was awarded the Legion of Merit, among other decorations. He told his story in his book, “The O.S.S. in Italy 1942-1945: A Personal Memoir,” published in 1989, and passed away in Middletown in 1994.

This is also where I learned of another book called “In The Blood.” Written by a Wesleyan professor (which is pretty much the only true Middletown tie), it’s an absolutely amazing account of a West Hartford engineer who, after years of stonewalling, was able to change the course of battlefield trauma surgery. I highly recommend the book; it reads like a thriller.

After my tour I was allowed to mosey and wander on my own. Some veterans arrived and had a very different experience than I did; that is, they had their own personal stories about their service and their branch to reminisce with each other about. As cool as I think this place is, it meant much more to them.

Meanwhile, I was over here laughing at the Flying Flapjack model planes.

These were experimental aircraft built by East Hartford’s own Vought Aircraft. The idea was to create a craft capable of super short takeoff and landing distances that was maneuverable like a dragonfly or something. They weren’t really meant to do battle, but rather to prove aviation theories. Besides, shortly after their tiny production run, the Navy moved from propeller driven planes to jets.

I wandered all around the place again, and picked up bits and pieces of stories about impressive models on display and things like the superior handguns the Nazis had in the early 1940’s. This is the kind of place that if you visit ever so often, you’ll likely learn new and different things.