Spring 2010 the Battery Newsletter, The Fort Miles Historical Association

8/9/2019 Spring 2010 the Battery Newsletter, The Fort Miles Historical Association

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SPRING 2010

FOR

TMILES

HISTORICALASSOCIATION

The Fort Miles Historical Association is a nonprogroup that has its mission to preserve, proteand defend all aspects of Fort Miles working wcommunity and state stakeholders and othinterested parties. The FMHA also has its goto work as an active partner with the State Delaware to develop the historical potential Fort Miles.


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Welcome to the Spring 2010 Editionof The Battery. It has been avery busy winter for FMHA. Wehad a wonderful Open House inNovember, attended by over 500folks, inside Battery 519. It wasthe weekend after one of the worststorms in history but underground30 it didnt much matter. Thanksto the efforts of our local legislator,Ruth Briggs King, FMHA washonored for our work in preservingWW II history in Delaware and our

efforts to make Battery 519 into thebest WWII museum inside a WWIIfacility in the US. The Proclamationwas presented to FMHA insidethe South Gun Block in front ofa hundred supporters. Thanks toFMHA Director John Roberts andhis hardy crew of workers, theBattery was in wonderful shape.Thanks also to Etta Kosaveachand others for preparing wonderfulfood for the event. The Open House

was so successful our FMHA Boardhas decided that this event willtake the place of our annual eventin December, so more informationwill follow in the Fall 2010Newsletter.

After six years of hard work andeffort by many hundreds of folks,and thousands of hours of labor, Iam pleased that FMHA is now at

the place where we can start thecampaign to raise the necessarymoney to make our Museum areality. So, I am happy to announcethat we will be kicking off a FortMiles Fundraising Campaign thatwill last through 2011 to raisethe funds forthree things tohappen: 1) tocreate the bestWWII Museuminside a WWII

facility in theUnited States;2) to enhanceand expand theC a n t o n m e n t(Barracks) areato make it adestination forovernight and weekend stay; and 3)to restore Tower 3 at Dewey Beachand make it open to the public. Iwill discuss each of these initiatives

further in a minute.

To make these three things happenour FMHA Board of Directorsdecided on a path forward at ourFebruary meeting. The first partof the plan is our Paver Campaignneeded to raise the money tomount our Fort Miles FundraisingCampaign 2010-2011. You can seea sample of the concrete paver in

this edition. These pavers will sellfor $200 each and will be placedinside the bunker lobby in July2010 in a Wall of Honor for all toview as they enter the MuseumWe are hoping to sell at least 100pavers which will go to finance our

General FundraisingCampaign beginningin the Fall of 2010The paver can bepersonally inscribedwith the name of a

family member orfriend who servedin the defense ofour country, to payhonor to a friend orcolleague, recognizea family memberor to pay tribute

generally to a spouse, friend orchildren. In the next month theover 300 members of FMHA willbe sent a brochure announcing

1 Fort Miles Historical AssociationNewsletter Spring 2010

Board of Directors

President

Dr. Gary Wray

Secretary

Ted George

Treasurer

Merlin Beil

Board Members

Bev Dalecki

Dan Lyons

Bob Frederick

Joe Kosaveach

Joe Johnson

Ray QuillenBob Fellows

Brian Lindsay

Jack Goins

John Roberts

From the Desk of the President By Dr. Gary Wray


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the selling of the pavers and ourmembership will have the firstopportunity to buy a paver. AfterJuly 1, 2010, the selling of Wall ofHonor pavers will be opened to thegeneral community. I informed theBoard that I intend to purchasefour pavers; one for myself, onefor my family, and one each to

honor the service to our countryof my father, an aerial engineeron a B-26 Marauder in WWII andmy grandfather, a sergeant onthe Western Front in WWI. It is myhope that others purchase severalpavers to honor family membersand loved ones (of course, the costis tax deductible). The first Wall ofHonor will be recognized on July 4,2010 inside the Battery.

The Fort Miles Fundraising

Campaign will kick off in the fallof 2010. We will need $2 million tocomplete our ambitious plans. Thefirst part of our plan is to establishour state of the art WWII museuminside Battery 519. In the Museumwe will need a complete HV system,room designs and development,facilities improvements, lighting,handicapped facilities, security anda host of other improvements. We

put the cost at $1.5 million. Thesecond part of the plan is to improvethe Cantonment area to makeit an overnight destination withfencing, security, bath and lavatoryfacilities, chow hall, barracksimprovements, HV system for theFort Miles Orientation Building,and other improvements. We put

that cost at $500,000.

The third part of the Fort MilesFundraising Plan is restoring Tower3, the southern most of the twotowers at Dewey Beach. The goal isto make this tower accessible to thepublic working with our partner,Delaware Seashore PreservationFriends Group. We have been onthis effort on Tower 3 for a couple ofyears and have raised some moneybut we are no where near what we

need to complete rehabilitation ofthe Tower. Our goal, ultimately, isto have two towers available to thepublic and all the other remainingtowers have signage around themtelling of their history and how theywere the eyes of the Fort, tyingthem in with our new museum.

So, that is our plan. Yes, it isambitious. Yes, it is also, with your

Fort Miles Historical Association 2

Quarterly Newsletter Spring 2010

support and the support of ourcommunity, achievable. You will bereceiving more information in thenear future concerning the PaverWall of Honor campaign. I am alsohappy to announce that Mike Rawlof Lewes, will be spearheading ourFort Miles Fundraising CampaignIn the near future we will be

forming a fundraising committeeto help us with this major effortOnce we are completed with thisproject, Fort Miles will truly bea destination in Delaware and afitting tribute to those who servedour country in its first effort atHomeland Security.

Finally, I would like to take aminute to thank the Board ofDirectors of FMHA for giving oftheir time and money to help make

this dream a reality. And a big voteof thanks to all the hundreds ofothers who have labored day (andsome nights) to bring us to thispoint where we can make the FortMiles Museum and Cantonment areality.

News From the Publicity Committee

By Bob Fellows

by lantern light is scheduledfor March 20, 2010 at 7pm.Preregistation required: call(302)645-6852.

Fort Miles is gearing up for TheWar Years, a special annualpresentation of what life waslike during World War ll. Thisevent is slated to take place

from 10AM to 4PM Saturday,April24,2010 at the Fort Miles HistoricArea in Cape Henlopen State Park.There will be 3-inch gun drilldemonstrations with re-enactors in

WWll-era uniforms who will bringthis mighty coastal fortificationback to life. Battery 519 tours willbe conducted hourly.

Members of the 261st CoastalArtillery and the 42ndDetachment(RCAT) AAA, whowere stationed at Fort Miles from1941-1960, will be holding a reunionduring The War Years event, April24,2010. Please contact Merlin Beil(302) 645-7759 or mbeil5@comcastnet for further information.

The FMHA publicity committeehas been working on the UpcomingEvents poster for 2010. Fort Milesbattery 519 tours are scheduled forSaturday, March 13 and Saturday,April 10, 2010 at 2PM. A tour


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3 Fort Miles Historical Association


Bits From the Bunker BustersBy John Roberts and Joe

Kosaveach

Since the last newsletter, muchhas happened inside of Battery 519.

More demolition, as our intrepidcrew removed the old wooden and Ibeam floor of the generator room.This is in preparation of a newconcrete floor, and eventually thisarea will be the orientation andpresentation area for Battery 519.

In preparation of our NovemberOpen House, we have begun to paintthe interior of the bunker, andessentially completed the cosmeticwork on the latrines, which were

available to the public.

We also have been painting thecorridor, check out the beforeand after photos at the end of thearticle. What a difference! Clean,dry, and well lit. And the painteliminates that abandoned buildingappearance.

And finally, we had a crew offraternity brothers and sororitysisters from the University ofDelaware show up on February20th to help uspaint the northrooms.

Thanks to Art,Jason, andothers, we nowhave a fullset of originaltelephones inthe South Gun

room. Moreimportantly,we can nowcommunicate between the gunroom and Building T601 in thecantonment area. Weve alreadymade the first inaugural phonecalls.

We also spent a day preparingthe generator shed outside for

demolition by Americorps NCCC.The foundation slab will be usedfor our paver wall!

And, as you can see, we are alot dryer now, thanks to getting

the construction dust out of ourdehumidifiers;

There are a few more regularvolunteers showing up these daysas well. In addition to Fred, Tomand myself, we also have Steve,Jack and Harry. These folks are avery welcome addition. Jobs thatwould take several days are nowbeing completed in a day or less.Welcome aboard! Joe Kosaveachhas been diligently working off siteon our 20MM Flak 38, which iscoming right along.

We are also adding more circuits,and reroutingall the wiringunder thefloor, havingit follow theoriginal WWIIp a t h w a y s .This is notonly a lotcloser tooriginal, but

being out ofsight, we canconserve our

period correct cabling and fixturesto just the areas visible to thepublic. This is important, as periodcorrect electrical hardware is quiteexpensive.

To do some of this, we had to renta jack hammer to bust up the

floor in two places to completour conduit runs. There are storiethat the concrete used at ForMiles was substandard. I can telyou, first hand, this is not thcase. Most ordinary concrete irated at 3000 PSI compressivstrength. According to one concretengineer, ours is more like 12,00

PSI. It is very strong, very hardand very difficult to demolish. Itook two days to open up an are

just 3 feet by 8 feet, and not verdeep. Apparently this is what youse to make artillery batteriesFurthermore, the estimate itheres about 10,000 TONS oreinforcing steel in Battery 519This is a very strong building.

We had a minor setback iFebruary, when the snow stormclaimed one of the power polefeeding Battery 519. Thanks to th

rapid action of the park and thcity of Lewes, we had power backon within two days. Not bad, givethe widespread outages in SusseCounty.

We are in the process of preparinthe Battery as well as thsite for installation of a fouzone geothermal heating, ai

conditioning, and dehumidificatiosystem. The quotes as they sit arrunning well over $100,000, andwe are working with contractors tmake this as reasonable as possibleRight now, this is well beyond oufiscal capacity, so we need any anall aid!


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Fort Miles Historical Association 4


Latrines: Before and After

Corridor: Before and After

Entrance

4 phones in the South Gun Room


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It is with a heavy heart that Iwrite this testimony to my friend,Lee Jennings. I never thought thatwhen I asked Lee to get his columnin for publication for this edition ofThe Battery that I would end upwriting it for him on the day of his

death.

Lee was a special guy and we hada very interesting relationship.Two guys who didnt have a lot incommon, but who had one big lovetogether, Delaware history, anda passion to work on Fort Milesand make it a destination for thestate of Delaware and, at the sametime, establish the best World WarII museum inside a World War IIfacility in the country. On almost

every historical issue we saweye to eye. On most other issues,including political, that was not thecase! But love of Delaware historyand Fort Miles trumped all!

I first met Lee years ago when Igave a Fort Miles presentation atthe Rehoboth Beach ConventionCenter and Lee attended along withseveral Park officials. We struckup a quick relationship after thetalk and immediately hit it off astwo historians who had a commoninterest would. In 2003 we bothwere contacted by Bob Frederickand David Main, two Dewey Beachresidents, who were thinking aboutestablishing a historical associationto focus really on the two towersat Dewey Beach. So, from that,was born the Fort Miles HistoricalAssociation, which had its comingout party in August, 2003, with five

members, including Leesboss in Parks, Jim ONeill.

From the beginning Leeand I saw that the realtreasure was Fort Milesin Lewes and the game

plan should focus onestablishing a museuminside one of the bunkers.With Lees steady handguiding the effort from Dover hewas able to marshal the resourcesto begin work in the Cantonment(barracks) area. With our littleFMHA group growing, we becamethe Friends group of the effort,supplying much of the manpowerat the beginning and talkingthe effort up in the downstate

Delaware community. In 2004 Leeand I decided to work together towrite a book on Fort Miles, whichafter much research in NationalArchives and the State archives,was published in 2005. Lee and Ireally came together in writing thebook and formed a fast friendshipthat only two can do when throwntogether on a project. I can trulysay that in the time that I haveworked and known Lee, never across word passed between us andhe became a close friend of bothme and my family.

As FMHA grew to over 300members, the project grew inscope. Lee put together a museumplan with the help of FMHA andthat plan became the center of ourefforts, or the prize as we call it.Lee got Dover to buy into it and theeffort started to clean out Battery

519. Under Lees careful

eye, progress was madeover the years, which iswhere we find ourselvestoday. At the February,2010 FMHA Boardmeeting, after muchdebate and discussion,we decided to launch theambitious fundraisingcampaign I mentionedin my article. Lees rolein this campaign was, as

always, critical to its success sowe now find ourselves looking tosee where we go from here withouthim. There is no doubt that theMuseum is where Lees heart wasso, in my view as his friend, wemust continue the work that heso loved. The day before he diedfor example, he was working in

the bunker full steam ahead, eventhough he could have worked inhis office in Dover pushing papersrather than bringing down blockwalls. No, the work must go onas the World War II Museum inBattery 519 is Lees legacy andthose of us who knew and lovedhim will make sure that it comesto pass. Lee, we miss you, but thework goes on and we will make youproud of the final result. Thanksfor being my friend.

5 Fort Miles Historical AssociationQuarterly Newsletter Spring 2010

Goodbye Lee

Lees wife, Linda, has askedthat donations be made to theFMHA, in lieu of flowers. Ifanyone would like to make acontribution in Lees memory,please go to the FMHAs website,www.fortmilesha.org. There is aDonate link on the homepage,where you can make a donationthrough PayPal. There will bea comment box, where you canleave a message to state thatits in his memory. If you wouldrather send a check, you canmail it to:

Fort Miles Historical AssociationDr. Gary Wray, President120 E. Wild Rabbit RunLewes, DE 19958

Dr. Gary Wray


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The many faces of Lee Jenningsthroughout Delaware State Parks

History wasnt just a job for him... it was his life.


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Cape Henlopen State Park isbeginning to bustle with activityas the weather breaks and wekick off Spring 2010. Visitors are

coming out of hibernation froma seemingly endless and brutalwinter, maintenance crews areopening buildings and preppinggrounds, and the Fort Miles HistoricSite is being readied for its annualre-enactment event scheduled forApril 24th called The War Years.Everyone on the Fort Miles teamplays a pivotal role in making surethat the post is ready for our bigevent but this year is different.

In early March the Fort Milesteam suffered a loss so great thatwe are still searching for ways tobridge the chasm. The State Parksdirector of cultural resources, LeeJennings, tragically passed awaydue to a massive heart attack. Thisuntimely death has left a void innot only the project, but the hearts

of those who loved him and sharedhis passion each and every day asFort Miles moved further fromdistant goal to tangible reality. Itwas his vision, his leadership andhis inexhaustible energy that notonly launched, but sustained thisproject day by day. I was privilegedto not only call him my supervisor,

but my mentor and my dear friend.My life changed the day we crossedpaths and it changed again theday he stepped off of that path.For the 4 short years that I knewhim he affected a lifetime in me,and for that I am forever grateful.For a man who lived in the past hepassed far before his time.

The April 24th special event, TheWar Years will feature a specialtribute to the man who brought life

to the Fort Miles project. At 1500hours, a special ceremony salutingLee will be held at the 3 inch gunpad featuring re-enactors fromthe 261st Coast Artillery at FortMiles and the Civil War from FortDelaware - the two forts that hebrought from what if to reality.Following the ceremony we will

have a reception in the orientationbuilding. We hope that you will joinus for the days events and stayto share your thoughts and paytribute to him.

From 1000 to 1500 the Fort Milesre-enactors will bring the fort tolife with barracks displays and

demonstrations on the functionaartillery. Battery 519 will be openfor guided tours throughout the dayat a cost of $3.00 per person. Forthose who have not visited Battery519 in a while, the progress of therestoration effort is staggeringA schedule of events for the dayappears below.

Parking for this event will be atthe beach bath house and shuttleswill provide transportation to and

from the event site. Food andrefreshments will be providedby the Fort Miles HistoricalAssociation. Mark your calendarfor April 24th and see history cometo life at Fort Miles!

The War YearsBy Mike Rogers

Fort Miles, DE State Parks

For more information:

www.fortmiles.org

www.fortmilesha.org

Fort Miles office:

302.644.5007

Email:

[email protected]

The Days Events:

Time Event Location10:15a Tour of Battery 519 Orientation Building10:30a Artillery Demonstration 3in Gun Pad10:45a Tour of Battery 519 Orientation Building11:30a Tour of Battery 519 Orientation Building12:00p Artillery Demonstration 3in Gun Pad12:15p Tour of Battery 519 Orientation Building12:45p Tour of Battery 519 Orientation Building1:15p Tour of Battery 519 Orientation Building1:30p Artillery Demonstration 3in Gun Pad2:00p Tour of Battery 519 Orientation Building3:00p Memorial for Leland 3in Gun Pad

Jennings Jr. 4:00p Reception Orientation Bu

Also...

Were still looking for volunteers to lead battery tours and assist with runningour 1942 Sperry Searchlight. If anyone is interested in either of those, there is asmall form to fill out at the end of the newsletter. We will be happy to makesure you have all the training and materials you need to feel comfortable beforegetting out in front of the public. This is a great way to have fun and spend timeat the Fort!


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General 261st Coast Artillery (life member) $1,000.

Colonel , 261st Coast Artillery $500.

Major, 261st Coast Artillery $250.

Captain, 261st Coast Artillery $100.

Small Business $75.

Dual/Family $20.

Individual $15.

Student $10.

Name: _______________________________________

Address: ___________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________

City: _________________, State__________ Zip: ________________

Phone: (___) _______________

Email: _____________________Please check one:

Help us preserve, restore and protect this remarkable site--become a member of theFort Miles Historical Association simply by lling out the form below and mailing it with

your check to the address listed below.

Enclosed is my check in the amount of: $__________

Make Checks payable to:

Fort Miles Historical AssociationDr. Gary Wray, President120 E. Wild Rabbit Run

Lewes, DE 19958

We are also seeking volunteers to learn how to give battery tours, and/or run our Sperry

searchlight. Our goal is to have a substantial group of members that can assist the FortMiles staff with tours and other related programs. Volunteers will receive all the training

and informative materials needed. So, if youve taken a battery tour and feel it might be

something you would like to help with, ll out this bottom form, and mail it to Dr. Gary Wray atthe address just above. If you would like further information, please call Dr. Wray at302-645-0753.

Yes, I would like to become a volunteer!

Name

Address

Phone

Email

Cut along this line if only mailing one application

NEW!

!


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Fort Miles Historic Association120 East Wild Rabbit RunLewes, DE 19958

FOR

TMILES

TORICALASSOCIATION

Documents

Spring 2010 the Battery Newsletter, The Fort Miles Historical Association