New museum, veteran’s center, opens in Las Vegas

Monday, May 29, 2000 | 11:14 a.m.

"We need to get across to future generations why ordinary men and women risked everything they had, including their lives, for no personal gain for the values of the nation," said Gobel, a Vietnam combat veteran and president of the Council of Nevada Veterans Organizations.

The council is an umbrella group formed 30 years ago that now includes 60 veterans clubs and organizations.

"Our mission is to help veterans. All of us together are stronger than any of us," said Gobel, who is confined to a wheelchair.

Sunday marked the beginning of the Lowden Veterans Center and Museum, a trilevel building that holds keepsakes spanning a century of U.S. military history.

After more than a decade of meetings, Gobel's group got a break in October from casino executive Paul Lowden and his wife, former state Sen. Sue Lowden.

The couple donated the use of a 12,000-square-foot building for a token annual rent of $1, giving the museum and center a boost toward reality.

With that, other community businesses and organizations got involved, donating everything from flagpoles to materials, equipment and labor.

Gobel and his wife, Caryl, field thousands of calls per month to a veterans hot line. Many are from despondent veterans contemplating suicide.

That alone shows the need in Nevada for a place like the center, he said.

Plans call for a computer training room and a hydrotherapy facility, with a sauna and showers.

"It's a living museum," Gobel said. "It's not only for veterans but for what veterans stand for."

One glass case is filled with every medal, including three Medals of Honor, from all branches of the armed forces.

A star-studded "jack" that flew over the USS New Orleans while it was moored in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, graces one wall. It was donated by Art Morsch.

One room has a display of hats and uniforms. Another is dedicated to women who served in the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines. Their highly polished shoes and crisply pressed uniforms sit below an elongated photo of every woman in the Marines in 1917.

Every war from World War I through the Persian Gulf War is represented in separate displays.

Las Vegan Frank Cannistracci, a Marine combat photographer during World War II, donated a collection of graphic, black-and-white photos that show the horror, devastation and innocence captured on film during his experiences in the South Pacific between 1941 and 1945.

In one corner across the room stands a Viet Cong flag captured in April 1969 at Nui Coto. In another corner sits a trunk filled with World War II mementos from China, Burma and India, including love letters displayed next to an Army land mine detector.

Another room contains verses and artwork composed by former prisoners of war. And yet another is devoted to "the forgotten war," the Korean War, which marks its 50th anniversary this year.

George Dunaway, the second of only 12 sergeant majors of the Army, helped put the finishing touches on the museum.

"It really tells people about what went on," he said. "They'll know when they leave here."