BECKLEY, WV (WOAY) – The Raleigh County Veterans and First Responders Museum received two donations to strengthen its mission of honoring and preserving local heroes’ legacy.
They are deeply grateful to the Beckley Area Foundation and Academy of Careers and Technology for their generosity.
“This allows us to continue; we don’t have to stop and fundraise. Now we’ve got the funding for the next two phases,” said Museum President Ron Hedrick. “Start bringing over our artifacts, now we can go back to some of the unskilled laborers and get them to come back and start knocking down walls again. Now things will start to overlap.”
Hedrick started applying for grants and was shocked and appreciative that they were awarded some.
“Fifty-eight thousand for our next phase, the police officers section of the museum. With that, we received another sizable grant ($51,000) for phase three,” Hedrick said. “And things started falling in place. Two grants and we’re over $100,000.”
According to the museum president, they were looking at three or four years before the whole facility could be completed. Now they’d love to have it done by November 2025. Stop by their Veterans Day open-house celebration to see how they’ve progressed with the building.
“We started out raising $25,000 towards the building fund,” said Hedrick. “Our goal was to try to use as much donated material and any free labor we could get, which worked really well through the demo phase.”
As they delved into the reconstruction side (material costs/things take longer) and the trades became more demanding.
“A lot of people can knock walls down, but not too many people know how to do mudding and sheetrock and carpet and stuff; it’s a trade,” the museum president said they had some guys who tried and it’s not fun to redo somebody’s work. “So we needed some funds to start actually having professionals do some of the work.”
All their efforts have paid off.
“I think it’ll be a place to hang out. And we want to invite retired veterans and service members and firemen and police officers and EMTs – come be a part of our family,’ said Hedrick. “We look forward to being a fully functioning museum that every day there’s something new to see.”
