Surgoinsville Area Archives and Museum to debut WWII exhibit this weekend

SURGOINSVILLE, Tenn. (WJHL) — As 2024 marks 80 years since D-Day, the Surgoinsville Area Archives and Museum (SAAM) is marking two years of hard work preserving the history of World War II’s impact on Hawkins County.

“Every community has a story to tell so we want to tell our story,” said Teresa Greer, SAAM’s secretary and planning committee member for the special exhibit.

The group started by researching at the Rogersville Review and then gathering photos and items to put on display.

“A little bit of research led to more leads, which led to more research so it was a little research-heavy to start with, but it was a lot of fun. And then as people learned about it, they would say, ‘Well, I have somebody who served in WWII,'” said Captain Charles Grow, a Marine Corps veteran and chair of the SAAM planning committee. “So serendipity played a role in it as well.”

The group also relied heavily on a scrapbook donated to them by the family of Dorothy Lee Vaughan, a young woman who saved newspaper clippings about the men from Hawkins County and the East Tennessee area who served.

“She kept the book all through the war years, and this has just been such a blessing to us to have this book to refer to,” Greer said. “We’ve used so many of the photos on our panels just to give the story of all of the sacrifice of these men and women.”

Each person on the committee has a direct connection to someone who served in the war.

“The local area was very heavily impacted by WWII,” Grow said. “The ladies who stayed home did an amazing job doing, what they had to do. The Marines, soldiers, airmen and sailors who went overseas and fought the fights in Europe and in the Pacific did an amazing job, but it came at a cost. If it hadn’t been for what our mostly grandfathers and grandmothers did to defend freedom and liberty around the world, we would have a completely different world order now.”

“It’s so personal when it’s a loved one that you know has suffered or been injured in a war that you want other people to know about their sacrifice,” said Greer.

Greer’s father, Private Ben Houston, was a prisoner of war captured in the Battle of the Bulge.

“He said the worst thing was the cold, and he suffered frostbite with his feet,” Greer said. “He never recovered totally from that but didn’t complain much.”

The special exhibit also pays homage to those on the homefront, including people Lois McClain.

“She was so dedicated to this cause, she walked from Surgoinsville to Oak Ridge to be a part of the plant in Oak Ridge that was making ammunition at that time,” said planning committee member Mary Nile Southam.

Uniforms, diaries, photos and more are on display at SAAM.

“It’s wonderful that they were willing to share with us and just the fact that they saved these things from the early 40s when WWII was going on,” Southam said. “They were proud of it.”

But the stories are the most treasured part.

“[There were five men] in Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked, and it’s an unusual thing to think of a small town like Surgoinsville to have five people at Pearl Harbor at that time,” said Grow.

It’s all in an effort to preserve the memories of what’s known as the Greatest Generation before they’re all gone.

“They came home with memories, challenges… some of them didn’t come home at all. So, it had a big impact on the people in this community,” Grow said. “Highlighting their story, reminding people that they existed, that what they did mattered, that they were heroes and that they defended freedom when we really needed it.”

The exhibit can travel and the group hopes to take it to schools.

“You learn from history what worked and what didn’t work,” said Southam, who spent more than 40 years as a teacher.

The World War II feature exhibit officially opens on Saturday, Aug. 24. The museum is located at 120 Old Stage Road.

It’s open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Thursdays and 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on the weekends.

If you have items you’d like to share with the SAAM and its members, especially for this exhibit, you can contact them via email .

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