Horsham, PA USA — Once the fence around the sprawling 1,100-acre former Willow Grove air base comes down to make way for homes, a school, a town center and more, future generations may not know its history as a military base, or an airfield.
“Fifty years from now, no one’s going to know that Willow Grove base existed,” said Heather Salazar, curator of the volunteer-run Harold F. Pitcairn Wings of Freedom Aviation Museum.
That is unless Salazar and the dozens of other volunteers at DVHAA’s museum have a say. Salazar, of Willow Grove, who holds a master’s degree in military history, joined the museum last July.
Since then, she has strived to help “make sure history stays alive in the public’s eye.”
Salazar, along with DVHAA, is working on several fronts to expand the educational offerings available through the history of the museum’s aircraft, artifacts and extensive library collection.
Within the next few months, Salazar hopes to have a formal educational program in place to train the museum’s roughly 30 docents on how best to approach and engage the museum’s 1,000 monthly visitors, and, perhaps most importantly for Salazar, how to “tell the story of the aircraft.”
“There’s a story for every one,” she said, adding that visitors might like to know how DVHAA came to possess the plane, its history and other specifications of the various models
DVHAA President John Rehfuss said the 12-year-old museum at one time had a docent training program in place, “but that went away a little bit.”
Rehfuss said that’s about to change though.
This weekend, for instance, Mike Posey, a lead aircraft restorer for the museum’s latest acquisition – a rare Harold F. Pitcairn PA-8 Mailwing – will offer a talk about his work with the plane. The 9 a.m. event on Saturday is open to the public and Boy Scout Troops in Bucks and Montgomery counties have been invited, according to DVHAA Spokeswoman Sherri Jones. For the museum’s docents, Rehfuss said the discussion is mandatory.