About Me

About me… I hate talking (or writing for that matter) about myself. The reality, however, is that people need to and should know who is the driving force behind this museum. I grew up with several really big influences in my life. First and foremost was being an army brat. Another was listening to my grandfather talk about his time in the pacific during the war. Lastly, there was my neighbor “Pappy” who flew p-51’s out of England. All of these things combined to create an insatiable thirst for knowledge about history. During high school, I went through a change and put history on the back burner and instead pursued a career in aviation. I suppose the two passions combined and I took a job flying cargo in DC-3’s. After some serious life changes, I ended up leaving aviation and started a new life with my wife and cats here in Kingman Ariz.

Upon settling into our new home here in Kingman I went over to Pawn World here on Northern. I basically left with a rifle and a job and that was almost a decade ago. Working here I began to realize a few things. Some people have no one to tell their story once they are gone and some people don’t care what people in their family did for the country. Lastly, I learned, if you build it they will come. After I started working on my collection I asked Jerry Homer the owner if I could hang a few things on the wall. The amount of interest those few pieces generated rekindled a fire in my soul. Since then; I now write as a guest columnist for the Standard Paper, I am a Community Facilitator with Mohave Community College, I do presentations for civic groups and I am now the Vice President of the Mohave County Historical Society. All of these activities have helped take a flame and turn it into an inferno. I can’t wait to rally this community together to build this museum. Some day when I am gone I don’t care if anything will know who I was, I simply want the stories, treasures and memories that people have entrusted me with to live on.
 

-Tom