Mid Rivers Newsmagazine 8-8-18

22 I COVER STORY I
August 8, 2018
MID RIVERS NEWSMAGAZINE
@MIDRIVERSNEWS
MIDRIVERSNEWSMAGAZINE.COM
Volunteers for the St. Charles County Veterans Museum, set to open in April 2019, have begun collecting military artifacts from local veterans that may be used for displays at the museum.
[Emily Rothermich photos]
Planning committee moves closer to creating a
Veterans Museum filled with memories
By BRIAN FLINCHPAUGH
Ralph Barrale’s visions as far as honoring
veterans have tended to become realities.
His latest project may as well – with a
little help from his friends.
Barrale’s track record is good. He took
a leadership role in renaming what was
largely an Interstate 70 south service road
from Foristell to St. Charles to “Veterans
Memorial Parkway,” and naming the Interstate
364 bridge across the Missouri River
“Veterans Memorial Bridge.” He even
dreamed up a veterans memorial adjacent
to the Lake Saint Louis city hall that was
completed in 2008.
Barrale, 94, a World War II veteran
and long-time active member of Veterans
of Foreign Wars Post 10350, isn’t resting
on his laurels. His latest project is a
St. Charles County Veterans Museum, an
idea coming closer to reality with O’Fallon
agreeing to a generous lease for the former
city park annex building at 410 E. Elm St.
for the museum, which is expected to open
April 2019
But the success of the project will be in the
details. Barrale and a group of museum supporters
are grappling with those details as
the opening gets closer. None is larger than
raising money so the museum can remain
not only open but also thrive in the years
to come. Another challenge is developing a
vision for what the museum will feature.
Barrale has talked about establishing
a county veterans museum for years and
enlisted the help of Jim Frain, a community
activist who is now a member of the
museum’s executive committee.
“Ralph said ‘If I was 25 years younger
I’d do it,’” Frain said. “And I said, ‘Well, I
was 25 years younger,’ which is true, I was
70 a couple of days ago, and you [Barrale]
are soon to be 95. People started joining up
and it has kind of moved along.”
“The thing is, there are thousands and
thousands of veterans in St. Charles County
and they have this memorabilia they have
from the service in a box or in a basement
or up in an attic or somewhere is doing
nothing but collecting dust,” Barrale said.
That memorabilia can include photographs,
medals, letters, helmets, old weapons,
news clippings, uniforms and other
items.
“It should be in a place where people can
come say, ‘Oh, I know this guy. Heck, he
was my neighbor. I didn’t know he was in
the Marines or Air Force.’ We have all this
memorabilia and it will be there [in the
U.S. Army veteran Ralph Barrale and Jim Frain are two community volunteers working to make
the St. Charles County Veterans Museum a reality.
museum] for generations to come.”
The memorabilia is important in that it
can tell a story about the times, experiences
and life of the veteran who brought
it home.
“You see these things and you ask, ‘What
happened to this person? Is he still alive?
Did he get killed?’” Barrale said.
Executive board member Teri Violet, a
St. Peters alderman and a U.S. Navy veteran
who served in the 1980s, said, “We’re
not collecting boxes of things that nobody
wanted. We’re collecting memorabilia that
has a connection to residents here in St.
Charles County and each bit of memorabilia
will have a story with it. That’s one
thing we’re requesting, that we have information
about the person this memorabilia
is coming from and a story,” she said.
Violet said people often don’t know what
to do with memorabilia, especially items
being passed down from parents or grandparents.
“In the homes I go to when I meet with
people, they say, ‘We’ve had it in our basement
forever, we would never throw it
away because it’s my father’s or grandfather’s,
but we don’t know what to do with
it,’” Frain said.
“Or it ends up in a garage sale,” Violet
added.
Organizing memorabilia can be an emotional
experience for everyone participating.
“Some of the stories you hear – there
are heroes all over the place,” Frain said.
Revealing some of the stories could
provide therapy for some veterans, but for
some, the stories may be too difficult or
remain painful to share.
Veterans often open up only to other
veterans, Barrale said. The memorabilia
can also reveal a bit about what they lived
through. Harrowing memories surface.
Barrale, who was a U.S. Army military
policeman, served with the Third Army
under Gen. George Patton and with the
First Army. He experienced the Battle of
the Bulge and the horrors of the Battle of
the Hurtgen Forest and was among the
troops liberating the Dachau concentration
camp. The flashbacks still occur. Even
during the interview with Barrale, Frain
and Violet in Barrale’s basement in Lake
Saint Louis, some came back.
Barrale said he was driving a jeep with
a mail clerk in the Hurtgen Forest through
an area with no roads and he saw bayonets
stuck in the ground identifying where
bodies were buried.
“The engineers had a bulldozer trying
to make a road there and all of sudden a
body comes out in front of it,” Barrale said.
“Stuff like that stays with you because you
lived it.”
He remembers the tops of trees in the
forest were gone due to German artillery
fire. Soldiers would be in foxholes below
the trees and “the trees would come down
and stab like spears,” he said.
“When people walk out of that museum,
we want them to have some kind of emotional
experience, whether its crying or
laughing or feeling good,” Frain said.
“And we want them saying, ‘Wow, what
a place,’” Barrale added.
Finding that place took a long time. Barrale
had hoped to locate it in Lake Saint
Louis, but that space wasn’t available. A
possible site in Wentzville didn’t work out.
Eventually, he met O’Fallon Mayor Bill
Hennessy and told him about his idea for
a museum.
“And right off the bat he looked at me
and said, ‘Ralph, I think I might have a
building for you.’”
There was a catch. The annex building,
used by the city’s parks and recreation
department, would become available if
city voters approved a parks proposition in
2016 that would provide more park space.