If someone asked me what I love most about designing museum exhibits, I would have to say that the handling of artifacts is a special thrill. I have held a piece of Mars and a moon rock in my hands, and pushed an actual moon boot into cement to create a footprint. I have carried the world’s most valuable colored diamond collection in a cardboard box, tried on a cape worn by Johnny Depp in a movie, handled the clothing worn by pioneers and the bones of dinosaurs. When you stand in the archives of a museum you can almost feel the history emanating from these objects. If only they could talk. Although inanimate, they seem to have a story--and want to tell it.


The recent exhibit, WINGS OF GOLD: CORONADO AND NAVAL AVIATION, was no exception. Military objects seem to have a special pathos and dignity. While searching for artifacts in homes and museums I was overcome with the meaning and sacrifice these objects represented. Sometimes it was their proximity to defining moments of history, as in the life ring of a boat hit by two kamikazes in World War II, or the touch of great people such as the license signed by Orville Wright. Sometimes it was the high price paid for an acquisition like the Purple Heart awarded to a pilot posthumously.


While designing our exhibit called WINGS OF GOLD, I naturally hoped to have actual wings of gold medals to display. I didn’t want just one, because it would be too small to have an impact. I wanted a collection, and so I looked everywhere. I called other museums, contacted people in the Navy, searched online and, in short, did everything I could think of. I even saved a space


to display them in the exhibit once they were located, but there was no collection to be had.


Then, just two weeks before the opening I received a message that one of our members, Lauris Boyer, had found something that I might be interested in while cleaning up a flooded storage area in her home. What she had found was her husband’s personal collection of Navy wings in an old box. I was stunned when I saw it. There was every type of wing ever pinned on a U.S. naval aviator, going back to the first ones in 1920. Besides aviator wings, Keith Boyer’s collection also included the wings earned by flight surgeons, flight crew, observers, balloon pilots and astronauts.


Was it divine intervention? Dumb luck or coincidence? Or do these objects possess a will of their own? I really don’t know, but it was an honor to place this beautiful collection in its predestined spot on the wall.


WINGS OF GOLD: CORONADO AND NAVAL AVIATION opened to the public on February 4 and will be on exhibit in the museum through December 2011. Boyer’s collection of wings may be seen on the wall opposite the entrance to the exhibit in the section entitled, “Heroes of the Sea and Air.”


Left: CDR Keith Boyer. Center: Varin Acevedo during construction on WINGS OF GOLD exhibit. Right: Rear Admiral James D. “Jig Dog” Ramage (Ret.) received a Key to the City of Coronado from City Councilmember Mike Woiwode, as Sybil Stockdale (widow of Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale), looks on. Ramage is one of the “Heroes of Sea & Air” highlighted in the exhibit.


www.coronadohistory.org 9


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12