“I kind of grew up in this place,” says Kyle Dunn, who’s been curator for the Eldred WWII Museum for not quite a year. He was three in 1996 when the museum opened, and remembers some of the original displays. He’s been volunteering for the past sixteen or so years, and when long-time curator Steve Appleby announced his retirement, Kyle was more than pleased to accept the position.

“Both of us started on January 1,” says Liz Threehouse, the new executive director.

The museum is here, on 201 Main Street in the tiny borough of Eldred (population 760, according to the 2020 US census), McKean County, because Tim Roudebush, son of George Roudebush, who had founded the WWII-era munitions plant about a mile outside of town, realized today’s kids weren’t being taught history—at least not up close and personal. A museum could help alleviate that problem. Knowing his father’s and Eldred’s close connection with the war, he opted to put it here.

The museum has been doing Tim’s good work of educating its visitors for nearly thirty years, but, as Kyle knows, it is a daunting task. He shares a New York Times stat from 2018: 41 percent of Americans and 66 percent of Millennials cannot say what Auschwitz was.

“I did get to meet him a few times,” says Kyle of Tim. “He always spoke in a boisterous voice. He was a very hard-working businessman all his life. He left us a huge legacy.”

The National Munitions Company plant opened in January of 1941, producing mortars, smoke projectiles, incendiaries, fuses, and hand grenades for British and Canadian forces, and for American forces after this country joined the war. There were 1,500 people employed there at one time, mostly women, and mostly women from Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio.

“It closed in 1948,” Kyle says. “There’s not much left.”

But there is a lot here, in these 15,000 square feet, thanks to Tim Roudebush, and to the hundreds of people from all over the world who have donated time, money, and, most important, the artifacts, equipment, memorabilia, photos, documents, books, uniforms, and more that are keeping the stories of the Second World War alive, even as the living memory of that time is disappearing.

“We have hundreds of binders,” says Liz. “We’re all about keeping the stories alive. We’re hoping, in the future, to send out some of our veterans’ stories—in, like, a kit for history buffs or teachers.”

In the meantime, the museum brings the wartime experience alive for its visitors.

“We try to cover every aspect of the war—within reason,” Kyle says. There’s a Life on the Home Front display, “because, of course, the war was about what happened here, too,” Kyle says. The Mitchell Paige Hall celebrates the young man from Pittsburgh who walked to the recruiting office in Baltimore, twice, before he was accepted at eighteen into the Marines, and who went on to earn a Congressional Medal of Honor. There is a water-cooled machine gun on display in that area—it’s the kind Colonel Paige used, although it’s not his.

There’s Ol’ Jake, a big cargo truck known as a deuce-and-a-half for the two and a half tons it could carry, and an ambulance, built to honor a family member who served in the war, its transport to the museum paid for by a donor.

“It is a WWII-era chassis with a modern engine and drive system. Most other museums didn’t want it for that reason, but we have no problem with that,” says Kyle.

There is a diorama of a battle, and incredibly detailed models of war ships made by a man named Guy Pernetti.

“He’s still making models for independent motion pictures and is an avid musician,” Kyle says. “I believe he’s living out in Ohio now.”

The museum is home to an actual periscope from a submarine, and, yes, you can look through it. It is very cool. There is a telephone switchboard used in the field, and also a field kitchen with a stove that ran off pressurized gasoline.

The most disquieting space is the room with the Holocaust display.

And then there are the uniforms. Dozens and dozens of them.

“Wars are not won by lines on a map, they’re won by individuals,” Kyle says. “Every single one of these uniforms have a story.” The Nisei solders are a great example. They were second-generation Japanese/Americans, and 33,000 of them volunteered to serve. Their units were some of the most decorated in the war.

“They did a hell of a job,” he adds.

Though he’s a couple of generations past the Greatest, Kyle has a few of his own stories and memories related to that time. Lee Frair, the superintendent of his alma mater, Portville Central School, was a D-Day survivor and an artillery observer in an L-3 Grasshopper (basically a Piper Cub, Kyle says).

“Lee was gone from Portville Central School by the time I got into elementary school, but he was still a local legend and visited frequently giving talks. The last time I had the pleasure to speak with him was in 2011 when he spoke at our graduation.

“A lot of the gentlemen who were WWII veterans that I knew in my youth I often didn’t know were veterans until after they passed,” he continues. “They were such humble people. Lee was definitely the one I knew mostly though.”

A radio commentator had this to say recently: We have to remember what it’s like to be at war, and how important it is to be at peace.

Kyle couldn’t agree more, and it’s likely Tim Roudebush would as well.

“We want to keep them alive up here, because they’re the ones who saved the world. It’s such an honor to be here.”