Olean Times Herald
May 26, 2002

For The Love Of History Eldred Man's Personal Military Collection Is A Community Museum by Kate Day Sager

ELDRED, Pa. - Collecting military wares and sharing them with others has been a passion Eldred resident Joel Gilfert has had for years. On Memorial Day, Mr. Gilfert will be sharing his military memorabilia with veterans and citizens when he opens the doors of his military museum to the public. Mr. Gilfert will be the guest speaker at the Eldred Memorial Day parade and will open the museum after the event. While it is not new, the museum has been enlarged from years past and now is contained in a two-room facility at 194 Main Street at the corner of Central Street. The home can be identified by an Eldred World War II Honor Roll that is displayed out front. Mr. Gilfert started his collection in high school after being inspired about the Civil War by a teacher. From that time on he began reading everything he could find about the military and collecting anything that veterans and residents would give him. Many of the items were from World War II but he also has many artifacts that include a 100-year-old officer's dress blue jacket from the U.S. Army. He continued collecting after he graduated in 1985 and by 1989 had so many military items that he decided to open his own private museum. A walk through the rooms show collections of memorabilia from Spanish-American War to Cold War eras and consist of items from the U.S., Russian, Japanese, British and German military. Mr. Gilfert said officials at the nearby Eldred World War II museum have offered to buy his items, but he refused. "I'm a hobby military historian...some people collect this, some collect that, I love military history," he said. "I'm preserving history in my own way. I hope somebody learns something when they come in here." The museum also contains military documentaries and archive news clippings shown on a television screen and old time radio broadcasts piped through speakers. Mr. Gilfert said he tries to keep politics out of his museum and is not judgmental on items he collects. "I don't want people to come in here and think I'm promoting Germany, Japan or Communist Russia," he said. "These are just simply the artifacts of those periods of time which people lived and survived." He said he kept the museum open from 1989 to 1995 and then closed it up when he moved to Germany to work for KOA Speer Electronics. While living in Germany for five years, he purchased German and Russian military items at flea markets and from individuals. Most of his Japanese items were given to him from veterans who had collected them in the war. Mr. Gilfert was able to have Japanese documents at the museum interpreted by Shogo Kobayashi, a retired Japanese businessman who is part of an exchange program at Otto-Eldred High School this year. Mr. Kobayashi teaches Japanese at the high school while trying to gain a better comprehension of English. Mr. Gilfert said that when he returned to the United States in 2000, he had collected so many items that he decided to add another room, an office and reference library and computer to the museum. Mr. Gilfert puts together a quarterly newsletter about he museum and hopes to set up a website. Until then, he said he'll continue to collect, share information and open his museum to anyone who wants to visit. "I just do this for the pleasure of owning the history, and to remember the soldiers for what they did," he said.

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