Officials with the Jackson County Veterans Hall are in the early stages of planning for a new building to house the museum.
Director Glenn Jones said the Veterans Hall has been in the lower level of the county archives building for nearly twenty years. Jones said, like most museums, more space is needed. Jones said the group has the idea to combine several groups into one space.
“Our goal is to build a larger building that would house the Jackson County Historical Society Museum in a fireproof safe building, handicap accessible, Veterans Hall and the county archives all in one fireproof building, brand new.” Jones said.
Jones said the idea of a veterans museum began when he was working as the county archivist on the third floor of the courthouse when he noticed a vacant wall.
“I thought, well, it would be really nice if we could have pictures of Jackson County veterans lining the hallway of the courthouse,” Jones said. “So, I got with Richard Ballard, he’s a framer from Jackson County and he decided that he would help me and he would do just $20 a frame, even though it cost more that that, that would be the donation per frame.”
Jones said what started as four framed photos has grown to the point that efforts had to be made to create more space just for the pictures.
“It got really crowded on the lower level of the archives building, so, about two years ago, we decided to reframe every picture and shrink the frame down a little bit and make just a smaller pictures,” Jones said. “That’s taken quite a while to do,but that just completed about two months ago. So now there’s a lot more room to hang more veterans pictures in there, so it’s done really well.”
Jones said the museum features artifacts starting with the Civil War all the way up to Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan. Jones said each piece is connected to Jackson County.
“There is a World War I machine gun that used to be on the corner of the courthouse outside,” Jones said. “There were four of them at one time and there was only one left. And the county mayor let us put it in the Veterans Hall.”
Jones said there is no timeline on getting a new building. Jones said he hopes to get help from both the Upper Cumberland Development District and Tennessee Tech.
“You always say honor a veterans, but a lot of people don’t know who the veterans are in their community, and you go to the Veterans Hall and you can recognize your fellow residents by seeing their picture on the wall. So I think it’s good for people to actually know, you know, these people are the ones that, you know, sacrificed for our freedom.”
The Jackson County Veterans Hall is located on School Drive in Gainesboro.
