Up next in 10
Paula Visits the Webb Military Museum in Savannah, GA - If you're looking for things to do in Savannah, Georgia, look no further than this one-of-a-kind war museum! It's one of the very best things to do in Savannah.
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#pauladeen #loveandbestdishes
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0:01
- Y'all, I'm not in the kitchen today.
0:05
I am bringing y'all somewhere here in Savannah
0:09
that I think y'all would love to see,
0:12
especially the times that we're living in now.
0:15
You know, we are really, really loving our military people
0:20
as they should be loved.
0:22
So I am bringing y'all down to Webb Military Museum.
0:28
And it's located on York Street and I'm fixing to go in
0:32
and talk with the owner Gary Webb,
0:34
who has spent his whole life collecting things
0:39
that are military.
0:40
So come on in and meet Gary.
0:43
Gary? - Hey, Paula!
0:45
Thanks for coming.
0:46
- Oh, thank you. - Welcome, welcome.
0:48
- [Paula] Thank you for having me.
0:50
- It's an honor to have you.
0:51
- I'm embarrassed to say I moved here in 1987
0:56
and I've never been in your museum.
0:58
- Well, we've only been open 10 years, so.
1:00
- [Paula] Well, I've been missing a lot.
1:03
- Well, come on.
1:04
Well, you've been a busy girl, too.
1:05
- [Paula] I have been a little busy.
1:06
- Well, come on over here,
1:07
let me tell you about Webb Military Museum.
1:08
This is Paul and Sam. - Y'all look around.
1:10
- Alright. - Hey, guys, how are, y'all?
1:14
- [Gary] Okay. Paula, don't go anywhere
1:15
'cause that's my hat.
1:17
That's my hat and that's how I give my lecture.
1:20
- No, well, put it on, honey.
1:22
- Okay, this is Webb Military Museum
1:24
and we call it Webb Military Museum because I'm Gary Webb
1:26
and everything in this museum belongs to me.
1:29
It's a 3,000 square foot horse barn
1:31
that I gutted and built out,
1:32
and features artifacts that I've collected my whole life.
1:35
The museum will span from the Civil War to the Cold War.
1:38
And we have a different narrative.
1:39
- The Civil War- - Indian War period,
1:41
Spanish American War, World War I,
1:43
World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War.
1:46
And we have a- - Okay.
1:47
I thought you said the Cold War.
1:48
- And there are.
1:49
We have a different narrative.
1:50
We don't talk about politics, government, wars,
1:52
we talk about honoring men and women.
1:53
- That's great.
1:54
- All nations, all conflicts.
1:56
My mission statement wall
1:57
will tell you that I had great parents.
1:59
My father was an Air Force officer for 35 years,
2:01
a veteran of two wars, but it would be my mother
2:04
who got me interested in history.
2:05
- [Paula] Your mother.
2:06
She was a beautiful, beautiful woman, wasn't she?
2:10
- [Gary] Oh, yeah, absolutely.
2:11
- [Paula] I see why your daddy fell for her.
2:13
- Well, my parents were not war brides.
2:15
My mother and father were pen pals.
2:17
After the war, my dad came back from the Pacific,
2:20
and when he was in the Pentagon,
2:24
he met a woman who was my mother's cousin,
2:25
and she talked him into writing to her cousin in London,
2:28
my mother, because she said they're all burned out,
2:31
they're all bombed out, they're still on rations.
2:33
So he wrote her for three years,
2:35
and after three years he wrote her and asked her,
2:37
if he sends the money, would you come to America.
2:40
And of course my grandfather
2:43
thought that was a terrible idea.
2:45
And he said, "Well, what's wrong with the blokes in London?"
2:47
And my mother said, "There are no blokes in London.
2:49
A whole generation of people are gone."
2:52
So he allowed her to come to America
2:53
as long as she came back in six months.
2:54
- And how old was she at the time?
2:56
- She was 21, 22.
2:57
- Okay, so she was a grown woman.
2:59
- Yeah, but it is 10 day trip.
3:01
Seven days on a boat.
3:03
- On a boat. - And three days
3:05
on a train to Amarillo, Texas.
3:07
My dad had gotten his commission.
3:09
And so once they arrived...
3:12
This is the photo my mother sent to my father.
3:14
My father never sent a photo.
3:16
He sent a photo of him next to a nice car-
3:18
- Now, that's your mother - And that's my father, yeah.
3:20
- [Paula] Okay. So she sent him this picture?
3:23
Now I don't understand that.
3:24
- This picture here. - Oh, oh, oh.
3:26
- [Gary] That's the picture she sent.
3:27
- [Paula] So he knew what she looked like.
3:28
- [Gary] Yeah, but she didn't know what he looked like.
3:30
- [Paula] Uh-huh.
3:33
- But it must have worked because they were married
3:34
six months later in Clovis, New Mexico.
3:36
And they stayed married for 52 years
3:38
till my mother passed away.
3:39
And they're both buried at Arlington Cemetery.
3:41
And of course my father was an Air Force officer,
3:45
a veteran of two wars, 35 years.
3:47
But my mother was born in London.
3:48
And so I spent 10 years in Europe growing up.
3:51
And so she had great war time stories since-
3:53
- [Paula] Well, I bet at that time in life as a child,
3:59
you got to live a very unusual, exciting, yeah.
4:06
- I lived in 15 cities,
4:08
four countries, seven states, before I was 22.
4:10
- How many languages do you speak?
4:12
- I speak English pretty well.
4:14
(Paula laughing)
4:15
My German's not bad and my Norwegian is horrible.
4:19
That's a map of London, Paula, and every red dot's a bomb.
4:21
- No! - My mother's house
4:23
is right there.
4:24
- No! - Yes, sir, yes, ma'am.
4:25
- [Paula] Did her house ever get bombed?
4:27
- [Gary] Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.
4:28
In fact, here's a photograph.
4:31
- [Paula] And what year would that have been?
4:32
- Well, 1940 to '45.
4:34
She stayed in London the whole five years.
4:36
She did not go to the country.
4:37
But that's a picture of my mother holding her gas mask
4:39
with her fair-haired Uncle Fred.
4:42
- Where did you find all this stuff?
4:44
- You know, I get that question every day.
4:47
I started collecting stuff
4:48
as a 10-year-old kid living in Germany.
4:50
And I would actually go in the woods and find stuff.
4:53
- I've read that.
4:54
- And I'd go to flea markets.
4:56
Everything was cheap back then
4:57
because I always tell people,
4:58
if I bought a helmet for $20 when I was 15,
5:03
when I was 25 it was worth $20, nothing went up.
5:06
But anniversaries happen.
5:08
And I noticed September 1st, 1989
5:12
was the 50th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland.
5:15
Over the next years,
5:16
everything World War II went up 20, 30 times.
5:19
- Yeah. - So all of a sudden,
5:19
a $25 German helmet is now worth 250.
5:22
And I had 50 German helmets. - Oh, my gosh.
5:24
- German uniforms went from $100 to a-
5:25
- So have you had anybody come in and put a value
5:30
on all your things in case of,
5:34
I don't even wanna say the word-
5:35
- Yeah, I've got it all itemized with values.
5:37
- Fire.
5:38
- As the years go by, it goes up.
5:40
Now, when my father was in Vietnam in '68, '69,
5:43
when he came back from Vietnam,
5:45
I got interested in the Vietnam conflict.
5:47
I was 13 years old.
5:48
But nobody was buying that but me.
5:50
But what happens, "Rambo" movies.
5:52
- Yes, yes. - And all that stuff.
5:54
So this would've been a really good investment
5:56
because you have to have money in the bank,
5:58
you need to have savings, and we do all that.
6:00
But I put three kids through private school
6:02
and college with this.
6:03
I need a tuition payment, I'd sell a hat, you know?
6:06
- Uh-huh. - But my-
6:07
- Sell a hat. (laughing) - My museum starts
6:08
with the Civil War.
6:09
And now I wanna point out some really interesting-
6:10
- Have you ever sold anything, Gary, that you regret?
6:13
- Not really. - Okay, good.
6:15
- If I sold something, you know,
6:17
I try not to sell the name stuff,
6:18
but, you know, stuff is stuff.
6:20
So I don't sell, and I can't keep it all.
6:22
And you can't keep it all.
6:23
But a couple interesting things in this museum
6:26
is you see the carte de visite
6:27
that's signed by Robert E. Lee?
6:29
- There. - Yes.
6:31
Oh, it says Robert E. Lee.
6:33
Oh, okay, it tells us. - Yeah, below that.
6:35
If you notice, Paula, he's in civilian clothes.
6:38
You never see a Robert E. Lee carte de visite
6:42
in civilian clothes.
6:43
But in 1866 after the war,
6:45
he goes to D.C. and meets with Matthew Brady,
6:48
and he has that photograph taken.
6:50
A year later, he comes to Savannah
6:52
and he gives it to a girl named Sarah Minas.
6:54
Sarah Minas was his girlfriend in 1853.
6:57
So if you're gonna have one,
6:58
you might as well have the one
6:59
he gives to his ex-girlfriend, right?
7:00
- Yes. - Absolutely.
7:02
- [Paula] And where in the world did you find that?
7:04
- That was another story we'll look at.
7:07
- [Paula] Okay.
7:08
- We're finding stuff, I have a real-
7:10
- Listen. - Way of routing things up,
7:11
putting things up.
7:12
- [Paula] We could film all day because, you know,
7:17
I'd love to know where did you get that?
7:19
- [Paula] Well, yeah, yeah.
7:21
Well, hey, where do you get a Russian plane, Paula?
7:23
I have a Russian MiG.
7:24
- No! - That's a MiG-21 cockpit.
7:26
- [Paula] No!
7:27
- [Gary] You know how hard that is to sneak past your wife?
7:30
That's really hard.
7:31
(Paula laughing)
7:33
I've gotta step- - Very-
7:35
- Here, it's the formal jet in Vietnam.
7:37
This breaks here, where the wings break here.
7:39
- [Paula] Uh-huh?
7:41
- This is the nose cone to it and everything.
7:43
Isn't that cool?
7:44
- [Paula] So that went on the front?
7:45
- Yes. - Oh, yeah.
7:49
- Like I said, this was a horse barn
7:50
that I gutted out and built out,
7:52
so the double doors allowed me to put the MiG in here
7:55
'cause everything here is designed by me.
7:56
I dressed every mannequin and I typed every plaque.
7:59
But we're gonna stroll around.
8:00
If one day you wanna come back and really spend some time-
8:03
- [Paula] I do.
8:05
- So the next conflict is the Indian War period,
8:09
which was a period between-
8:10
- Wait, say that again?
8:11
- The Indian War period-
8:12
- [Paula] Indian Wars, 1866.
8:14
- The Civil War and the Spanish American War.
8:16
But this is a saddle that came out
8:18
of the battlefield at Custer's last stand.
8:21
- No! - Yeah, it's still marked.
8:22
You can't see it very well, but it says "7C M Company"
8:25
- [Paula] Oh, yeah, I see.
8:27
- Now, same with this.
8:28
This is the Spanish American War era.
8:31
And this is another Savannahian
8:33
Colonel Shelby Meyer's uniform rig.
8:37
The Spanish American War started
8:39
when the USS Maine exploded in Havana harbor.
8:42
It was probably a boiler that went off,
8:43
but we blamed the Spaniards
8:44
because we wanted Cuba out of our hemisphere.
8:47
So we took Cuba, but we also took Wake Island,
8:49
Guam, Puerto Rico, I believe, and the Philippines,
8:52
which would come back and bite us, Pearl Harbor.
8:54
But this is a part of a bowl
8:56
hammered out of some of the metal from the USS Maine.
9:02
And the Navy flat hat
9:03
belonged to George Miller that says USS Maine.
9:07
- [Paula] Were you talking about the book or the bowl?
9:08
- The bowl. - Alright.
9:09
So now tell me about that bowl one more time?
9:12
I was thinking you were talking about the book.
9:14
Some of the metal from the-
9:15
- [Paula] This is beautiful.
9:16
- Yeah. Some of the metal from the USS Maine,
9:19
this was hammered out into a bowl
9:20
with a little citation and given to somebody.
9:23
So it's actually part of the Maine.
9:25
George Miller is still missing in action,
9:27
but that's his USS Maine hat.
9:29
- [Paula] So he was never found?
9:31
- [Gary] Never found.
9:33
- [Paula] Gary, I can't get close enough to read that.
9:37
- Fascinating story.
9:38
This belonged to one of my neighbors
9:39
where I lived by Whitemarsh Island.
9:41
He was a direct descendant of Lincoln,
9:43
but when I bought the image,
9:45
all you could see was this part.
9:47
When I went to clean it and I pulled the paper out,
9:49
this dropped down, which had been folded over-
9:51
- The picture? - This piece
9:52
of paper fell down.
9:54
- Oh. - And it was hidden
9:55
for 100 years, and the information says,
9:57
"Went west during the gold rush of 1849, age 20."
10:00
Well, that means this picture was taken 1849.
10:03
- Yeah. - "Never heard from again.
10:04
Supposedly killed by Indians."
10:07
Why would you hide the best part?
10:08
But a fascinating-
10:09
(Paula laughing)
10:12
And this is World War I now.
10:13
And this is a fascinating illustration
10:15
because this is the illustration that came out in 1918
10:18
in the "Ladies' Home Journal,"
10:19
which was a tabloid-sized paper.
10:22
A year later, Erwin Schwabe would paint the painting,
10:24
which hung in a Manhattan museum for 70 years,
10:26
returned to the Schwabe family who sold it to an art dealer,
10:29
and I bought it from her,
10:30
which I have the painting up front.
10:32
- [Paula] Oh, well, I want to make sure
10:34
I get a glance at it, okay?
10:37
- Now, this is one of Eddie Rickenbacker's uniform.
10:39
He was the top American ace.
10:42
Also, he was the highest decorated American soldier.
10:45
The Audie Murphy of World War I,
10:46
but this is one of his uniforms with his wings.
10:48
And I have three signatures.
10:49
One's inside the jacket and two are here.
10:52
- [Paula] Wow.
10:54
- Paula, my favorite case, we're leaving World War I,
10:57
is getting to the Battle of Britain
10:59
because this is my mother's gas mask.
11:01
- [Paula] The Battle of Britain?
11:02
- [Gary] The Battle of Britain,
11:03
this is my mother's gas mask.
11:04
- [Paula] That is your mother's gas mask?
11:06
- [Gary] They came in boxes, but girls did not like it.
11:08
They liked the leather case.
11:10
There's a picture when she was 17,
11:12
carrying it with her friends, okay?
11:13
- [Paula] Mm.
11:14
- Now, the Germans never did gas,
11:18
but you had to have a gas mask for everything you did.
11:20
So this gives you an idea.
11:22
These were for three and 4-year-old children.
11:25
These are for teenagers,
11:26
but that's for an infant, an infant.
11:28
- The big one? - Yeah.
11:29
You can see it, this gives it in clarity there.
11:31
- [Paula] Oh, my gosh, look at her.
11:34
- You have to put the right in there,
11:37
and you have to pump it, too.
11:39
So this a horrific thing to have to drag around.
11:42
These were my granddad's fire brigade helmets.
11:45
And his unit, "HR" just meant heavy rescue.
11:47
My grandfather was 35 years old when the war started.
11:50
Beautiful dark hair, my mother said six months
11:52
into the war it turned white and it never came back.
11:55
And the bombed-out building,
11:56
my mother's house is four doors to the right.
11:59
And that's the first month of the heavy bombing.
12:03
So you can obviously see how she grew up.
12:06
- And that was in London? - London.
12:07
- Yeah. - Everything's in London.
12:09
Now, again, my mother had German relatives, too.
12:11
But there's a lot of great side stories on all that,
12:13
all of my mother's stories.
12:15
- [Paula] Alright, this is your mother's-
12:16
- [Gary] These were Girl Scout uniforms.
12:18
- I was gonna say. - Because we have
12:20
the Girl Scouts in Savannah, Georgia.
12:21
- That's right. - So, but my mother
12:23
was a Girl Guide, but the significance is
12:25
in 1930 vintage uniforms, they had zippers.
12:28
When the war started, the government needed zippers,
12:31
so they went to buttons.
12:32
So they actually, Girl Scouts, helped the war effort.
12:35
So that's why they're in there.
12:36
And of course we do Girl Scout tours here also.
12:38
- [Paula] Yes, yes. We have a lot of Girl Scout-
12:41
- Oh, yeah. - Groups coming
12:43
to the restaurant.
12:45
- Now when we get to the Pacific, these are fantastic.
12:48
I have a lot of Pearl Harbor stuff.
12:51
This is an actual complete truck off the USS Oklahoma.
12:55
And this pieces of the USS Arizona.
12:58
And this is a hat, a naval hat, that says "USS Arizona."
13:01
But I also have from the Downes,
13:03
California, and the Pennsylvania.
13:05
I've a lot of Pearl Harbor stuff, which is extremely rare.
13:07
Even the Christmas dinner menu.
13:09
You'd like to- - No!
13:11
- But if you notice, it has great stuff in here.
13:13
But the-
13:14
- "Oyster stew." - Yeah, cigars, cigarettes.
13:18
- [Paula] Oh, my gosh, relishes.
13:20
- If you're familiar with Gloria Steinem,
13:23
these are her aunt's uniforms here.
13:26
She was a WASP.
13:27
And you see how small these women uniforms-
13:30
- Yeah. - Unbelievable.
13:31
Everything is so tiny.
13:32
- [Paula] Small women.
13:34
- Now, in my museum, when people come in,
13:37
we do do a scavenger hunt.
13:39
I allow them to take photos and I have a selfie booth here.
13:42
- Uh-huh. - Which people can come,
13:44
put on a hat if they like.
13:45
- [Paula] Oh, my gosh.
13:46
- Stand next to the dummy like this, you know?
13:49
- [Paula] Okay, I want one.
13:50
- Yeah, put a hat on!
13:51
- [Paula] All right, which hat should I put on?
13:52
- I'm gonna put my dad's hat.
13:55
- [Paula] Okay.
13:56
- [Gary] Here's a female hat if you like?
13:58
- Okay. - There you go.
14:00
And, you know, people can have fun.
14:01
Kids like to do it.
14:03
I try to get kids interactive.
14:04
- All right, are are we going to stand?
14:06
- If we can. - Yes.
14:06
- If Theresa can get us in here with this guy here.
14:09
He's from Vietnam.
14:11
So you can take pictures, enjoy the hats.
14:15
And if I can engage children to get them an interest,
14:18
it really is nice.
14:20
Now, you know, we have the Eighth Air Force Museum
14:22
in Savannah, Georgia.
14:23
This is my Eighth Air Force-
14:25
- Yeah, The Mighty Eighth.
14:26
- [Gary] And I have some stuff
14:27
that belonged to Franc O'Driscoll Hunter.
14:29
And this particular uniform belonged
14:31
to a man in the 445th Bomb Group.
14:33
When I got his uniform grouping, I got his postwar yearbook.
14:36
That's the same one that Jimmy Stewart, the actor, was in.
14:39
So in the book, Stewart autographs his photograph
14:42
and I have two or three unpublished photographs
14:44
of Jimmy Stewart, which he was the real deal.
14:47
He went on 20 combat missions.
14:48
- Wow. - And all that.
14:50
- [Paula] Wow.
14:54
- [Gary] See the picture behind that?
14:56
- Oh, yes. - Yeah.
14:57
When he passed away, his daughter,
14:58
I believe sold that to me.
15:00
She said her brother, her older brother,
15:02
wanted to be just like his father.
15:03
So the mother sewed that up-
15:04
- No! - Into the five-and-dime
15:06
and got the hat, but she put all original insignia
15:09
and there's a photo of him wearing it like that, you know.
15:12
(Paula chuckling)
15:15
I like that because, you know, we used to dress kids up.
15:18
- [Paula] You know, Gary, I feel so privileged
15:24
to have come in here today and talked to you
15:27
because some museum folks made the comment to you that...
15:35
What did they say about you?
15:37
They've seen a lot of-
15:38
- Oh, yeah.
15:39
The museum curators have said,
15:40
"We have a museum, but we have just stuff in it.
15:43
You have a museum with emotion in it."
15:45
- You do. - And people come in
15:46
here and, you know, everybody has a connection
15:48
with the military one way or the other.
15:49
- Right. - And for a, you know,
15:51
veterans, they like it because we honor them here.
15:53
- Yeah. - It's not just stuff.
15:56
The museum curator from the Verdun Museum, a French guy,
15:59
came in and he told me, you know,
16:01
"We have a museum in Verdun and I'm the curator,
16:04
but it's boring, it's full of statistics,
16:06
it's full of battle plans."
16:07
He says, "I come in your museum and I want to cry."
16:10
- I know.
16:11
- The French, they do a lot of that too, you know?
16:13
- I know.
16:13
I mean, it's real.
16:17
And the fact that you don't mind people touching.
16:20
- Yeah, no, I have it out for them to do
16:22
because people do that.
16:24
And like I said, all the, you know,
16:25
the concentration camp stuff,
16:26
all original, too, and everything.
16:28
- [Paula] That was what they wore
16:29
in the concentration camps?
16:31
- Yeah, my mother's uncle
16:32
was sent to Dachau concentration
16:33
for saying something negative about Hitler.
16:36
His number was 9-3-0-1-2, so.
16:41
And, again, when you have a name to it, you know,
16:47
it really makes it come to life and everything.
16:49
- Right. - And this is like-
16:51
- It's just like you knew all these people personally.
16:54
- [Gary] Well, when you have their diaries,
16:55
you can read their diaries.
16:57
- Oh, my gosh. - That makes a difference.
16:58
- [Paula] What's the most interesting diary you've read?
17:03
- The one over here.
17:07
This aviator, he's a gunner on a top turret on a B-24.
17:12
And he writes in his diary, on his 10th mission,
17:14
"Flack intense, bursting all around us.
17:16
Only by the grace of God no hits.
17:18
Saw midair collision.
17:20
Both ships burst into flames.
17:22
Fellas didn't have a chance."
17:24
That's 20 men falling out of the sky that were his friends.
17:27
And that's his 10th mission.
17:28
He gets on the plane 30 more times for 40 missions.
17:32
I mean, one mission's got to rattle you.
17:33
- Did he live through all the missions.
17:35
- He did. And he lived to be 84 years old
17:37
and I purchased it from his family.
17:39
- Wow. - But when you read
17:39
these diaries, they're hair-raising
17:42
because you go on one mission,
17:43
that's the last thing you wanna do,
17:44
but you gotta go on 40 missions
17:46
and witnessing things like that.
17:48
And this is a 21-year-old kid, you know?
17:50
It's amazing. - Wow.
17:52
- That these kids put through-
17:54
- Yeah. And these men and women that come back
17:58
after seeing horrendous things like that, you know, the-
18:02
- Yeah. - Post-partum depression.
18:04
- Yeah. I mean, funny, my mother never exhibited
18:07
any PTSD and I never heard my mother
18:08
say an unkind word, which is unusual.
18:11
But that was the world she lived in.
18:12
- It's 'cause I'm sure she had plenty
18:14
of unkind words she could have said.
18:17
- [Gary] Some of the stories I can't even repeat.
18:19
- Really? - Yeah.
18:20
- Why? - Well, they're too horrific.
18:24
- They're what? - Too horrific.
18:25
- Too horrific. - Yeah.
18:27
- What she saw. - That she shared with you?
18:30
- [Gary] Now, I have great Vietnam stuff.
18:32
- [Paula] Did your mother ever write a book?
18:34
- [Gary] Well, I tried for years to record her, you know,
18:39
with the old camcorders and stuff.
18:41
And then, you know, she liked to talk
18:42
but she didn't like to be recorded.
18:43
So I gave her one of those blank books,
18:45
with those blank pages.
18:46
And when she passed away, I found it,
18:48
but 20 pages had been torn out.
18:50
I guess she started and ripped that, started,
18:52
so I don't know.
18:53
But I did find a cassette, a little cassette,
18:55
and it said "The Battle of Britain."
18:57
And there's an hour and a half of her talking about her.
19:00
So I made DVDs and gave it to my brother and sisters.
19:03
- Oh, good. - But, you know,
19:04
people don't think about recording this stuff.
19:06
I record it all in my head.
19:07
- [Paula] Yeah.
19:08
- And like this is Vietnam.
19:10
- And that's great for people like you
19:11
that have a good memory, but as we start getting older,
19:14
sometimes our memory is-
19:16
- I did not get one World War II vet in this year.
19:19
I usually get one or two,
19:20
but they're just getting older and all that.
19:22
- Right.
19:23
- But this is Westmoreland's uniform,
19:25
the MACV commander of Vietnam.
19:26
And that's him with LBJ in Vietnam.
19:29
- [Paula] Yes.
19:30
- He's wearing the same shirt, too.
19:31
- Yes. - Which is great.
19:32
- [Paula] Uh-huh.
19:33
- And all the stuff in the Vietnam is really cool
19:35
because they're either featured in books,
19:39
like this guy, he's featured the book "The Raid."
19:41
He was part of the Son Tay Raid.
19:43
This is Rick Swofford,
19:44
he's featured in the book "The Tunnels of Cu Chi."
19:46
And this is the Bob Hope stuff that from '68-'69 tour.
19:50
- No! - I bought a lot of this stuff
19:51
before the internet, so when the internet came up,
19:53
I Googled Bob Hope and there's old pictures of him.
19:56
But what's really spectacular
19:58
is how it's a really small world when you find...
20:01
I bought this helmet from a man
20:02
who cleans out houses in Atlanta.
20:04
It had his name on it,
20:06
William James Brashear was shot down
20:07
over Laos in May of '69.
20:09
He's still missing an action.
20:11
But he flew out of Cam Ranh Bay, South Vietnam,
20:13
with the 12th Tactical Fighter as a major.
20:16
My father was a major at Cam Ranh Bay
20:18
with the 12th Tactical Fighter in May of '69.
20:20
My dad had to know him.
20:22
But, Paula, once we leave Vietnam,
20:26
we can't keep up with all the conflicts and wars,
20:28
but I end it here with the Cold War period and also beyond.
20:32
But that's my brother's uniform.
20:34
He was in the First Gulf War as advisor to the Saudis.
20:37
So his name's in Arabic and English,
20:38
and he wears the rank of major.
20:41
And as you may know,
20:42
we have the 1st Ranger Battalion in Savannah.
20:47
35 years ago, the 1st Battalion Rangers
20:49
parachuted into Panama, that Noriega issue,
20:51
the first killed in action was my friend James Markwell.
20:54
- Oh. - And that's the picture
20:55
I painted to honor Markwell.
20:58
- [Paula] You paint as well?
20:59
- Graphic artistry, yes, ma'am.
21:02
The original painting still hangs
21:03
in the Ranger headquarters,
21:05
and that's the picture of it there.
21:07
And if you get Markwell's room, that hangs above his bed,
21:11
where he billeted.
21:12
Now, every year on December the 20th,
21:14
the Rangers honor Markwell.
21:17
He was at my house on December the 18th, 1989,
21:20
killed 30 hours later.
21:24
- Well, Gary, I am truly...
21:30
I'm becoming a huge fan of yours-
21:32
- Oh, great. - After being here.
21:34
And Michael and I have 11 grandchildren
21:37
and I would love to bring my boys in.
21:40
- You bring 'em all here
21:41
and we'll do a really comprehensive tour.
21:44
They'll love it.
21:45
- Oh, good.
21:46
So you actually schedule tour groups?
21:48
- Yes. And generally, you know,
21:49
when I'm gonna have a group of people,
21:51
I do the tours anyways.
21:52
I do it personally myself.
21:53
- I've been to museums before,
21:55
but this is the first time
21:58
I've ever been to a museum like this.
22:01
- It's a different museum.
22:02
And we're reasonably priced.
22:03
And I'm the only museum I think in Savannah
22:05
that does active duty for free.
22:06
We give veterans rates.
22:07
I give rates to any firemen, policemen, nurses-
22:13
- Yes. - Students.
22:14
I mean, I just want people to come to the museum and enjoy.
22:17
- Well, I've so appreciated it.
22:19
- Appreciate you. - I appreciate it so much.
22:23
And I'm gonna send everybody your way.
22:26
- Well, I'm gonna give you my card, Paula.
22:28
- Please, thank you.
22:29
- You call me and whenever you want to round up the troops,
22:32
they all live in Savannah, pretty much?
22:34
- Except for one.
22:36
- You're welcome to my museum.
22:37
- But like I said, just the older boys.
22:38
- Yeah, yeah. - You know, the four,
22:41
five, six, seven year olds, they wouldn't-
22:44
- Well, no, no.
22:45
But anybody usually over six and for kids,
22:49
anybody under eight's always free here anyways.
22:51
Babies are free.
22:52
And I even tell people, you know,
22:54
if you bring your baby, screaming babies are allowed also.
22:56
(Paula laughing) Puppy dogs, too.
22:58
- Have you ever been in a museum like this one, y'all?
23:02
I would say not.
23:04
So, Gary, and I are signing off until we see you again.
23:11
Loving best dishes, y'all. (chuckling)
23:17
Hey, y'all, it's Paula Deen.
23:19
Now, if you enjoyed this video, be sure to like it
23:23
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23:26
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23:30
Love and Best Dishes Y'all.
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