Rededication of Plaque Highlights Armed Forces Day at Military Museum
The Military Museum of North Florida and Reynolds Industrial Park on SR 16 in Green Cove Springs celebrated its 4th Annual Armed Forces Day Car and Motorcycle Show on Saturday and Sunday, May 21-22, 2016. The gates opened around 8:00 AM, two hours earlier than last year, and remained opened throughout the afternoon. Guests arrived throughout the day for the free event and were treated to several dozens of beautiful antique autos and motorcycles and two dozen new jeeps. Tall Bear Montez, a native Indian from White Mountain, Arizona, but was raised in Texas, performed a drum and dance ritual indigenous to his tribe. As a young man, Tall Bear was brought up as both Cherokee and Apache.
The main event at the Military Museum on Saturday was the rededication of a plaque for Ensign Benjamin Lee II, U.S.N.R.F. The original plaque been removed by vandals as an thoughtless prank. Curator of the museum, Mr. Chris Rodatz, welcomed an assembled crowd of about 150 guests at the main flag pole at 9:00 AM where the unveiling of the plaque took place. He spoke of the importance of the naval training base in Green Cove Springs during World War II and its main aircraft, the F6F Hellcat Fighter which was responsible for over 5,000 shoot downs during the war. Joe Kennedy, Ed McMahon, and General Roy Geiger (the father of Marine Corps Aviation) were just several of the fighter pilots who flew the Hellcat, which was created specifically to shoot down the Japanese Zero aircraft.
Next to speak was Ted McGowan, Executive Director of Reynolds Park/Clay County Port, Inc. He thanked all those who served in a volunteer capacity for the museum and said, "The continuance of that, (support of the museum) is dependent of the volunteers and on donations that you all make, and we encourage that."
US Representative Ted Yoho of Clay County and the 3rd District of Florida joked how he was also a vet, a VETERINARIAN with his doctor's degree in animal medicine! To all the real veterans, he said, "I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart, my wife's heart, my kid's heart, because without the dedication, sacrifice and commitment of you, we wouldn't have the liberties and freedoms we have everyday. And I know I'm guilty sometimes of taking those for granted but it's so important that we thank a veteran everyday for the liberties and freedoms that we have. So I thank you." Representative Yoho added, "You're not here to raise money, I know you are, but that's part of that, but that's not the reason we're here. We're here to remind people of history and it's so important to remember history." He then went on to tell the crowd that Ensign Benjamin Lee was one of the first aviators from the Green Cove Springs training base and he was also one of the first pilots who perished in 1918 during the first World War. The field was commissioned in 1938 and dedicated to him by his parents and others. When Mr. Yoho had finished speaking, he and 94-year old retired Lt Cdr. Joe Elliott, who flew combat missions during World War II, pulled back the covering and unveiled the new plaque honoring the young aviator by naming the field after him.
For those who love loud noises, outside the museum was the place to be. There were several shiny silver "choppers" and a few suped-up classic autos with loud headers. There was also a World War II reenactment between the Germans and the US with hundreds of blank rounds being fired for almost 15 minutes. As expected, the Americans prevailed. And if those noises weren't loud enough, several Civil War canons fired at least a dozen times, with the most deafening sound coming from the canon blast shortly after the plaque rededication. The canon was only about 50 feet from the plaque and very few of the assembled were prepared for the blast!