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Katy Veterans Memorial Museum
KATY, Texas (FOX 26) – Betty Edmundson has been with the VFW museum since its inception in the mid-1990s, and she may be the perfect guide for this unique repository of America’s military history. It covers all branches of the military and just about every military conflict from the American Revolution up to now.
“We’ve got some information with maps and pictures and artifacts on the American Revolution, then going into the War with Mexico, the War with Spain, World War I, Korea, World War II,” Betty say. “We have uniforms, both male and female because, you know, women have been involved in our wars officially or non-officially ever since the Revolutionary War.”
In every conflict since then, service men and women returned home with souvenirs that are known as the spoils of war.
“They’re items that belonged to the enemy that our military guys brought back to — some of them used them as memories. Some of them used them to prove ‘I was there, I really was,’” she says.
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Former President George H.W. Bush dedicated this museum in 1996. There is an area here honoring his service to our country.
“He was also a member of the VFW, not of this post, but he was a member. So it was only right that we have an area for one of our members,” Betty says.
There’s one particular exhibit here that you may not see elsewhere. Betty is proud to have secured a complete set of Medals of Honor.
“We have one for the Army. Then we have the one for the Marine Corps, the Navy, and the Coast Guard, and then we have one for the Air Force,” she says.
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A few years ago, this museum closed after water damage from the Tax Day Flood. After the city renovated the building, disaster struck again.
“We had quite a bit more water in here with Harvey. Fortunately, we didn’t have any of the artifacts back in at that time,” Betty says.
Everything that Mother Nature could not destroy with rain and flooding is once again on display.
“We’re back in business,” Betty says.