MUSEUM: Have you been to the Eldred World War II Museum?

You’ll hear detractors — Oh it’s not for me. I wouldn’t be interested. Why would I want to go in a stuffy old building and see stuff nobody else wanted?

How very wrong those detractors would be.

Spend some time there, particularly on a day where there’s an educational program, which we can’t say enough about — and there happens to be on Thursday, Patriot Day. You’ll hear people say things like, “My dad (grandpa, uncle, mom, aunt, grandma, whoever) was in the war, but didn’t talk about it. This is amazing. I wonder if they saw these things?”

Men from this region went in droves. Men who, for the most part, hadn’t traveled outside of this general area of the country, found themselves in France, United Kingdom, North Africa, Italy, Germany and in the Pacific Theater to Solomon Islands, New Guinea, Philippines, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Aleutian Islands, to name a few. Places they might have learned about in school were now a reality. Time zones, climates, people, economies, food, languages, animals, sounds, smells — everything was different.

Sure, books can tell the story. Movies often help one understand. While we can never walk in their shoes, we can touch their uniforms. See their helmets, dented where a bullet ricocheted instead of piercing. Their uniforms, often worn and ragged, like the men surely felt by the time they came home.

Learn stories of men like Mitchell Paige, which was told at a recent event at the museum by curator emeritus Steve Appleby — that guy doesn’t just tell a story, he lives it. The passion of curator Kyle Dunn and executive director Liz Threehouse are palpable.

Go to the museum. Ask questions. They love it when you do.