Somewhere between our radio station and Kenosha, the city of Kenosha, there is a hidden
gem right there in summers. It's called the Pritzker Military Museum. Let me give you
this name right here. Pritzker Military Museum and Library. I like the initials. Welcome to
the PMML. That's great. And the president of this is Scott English and he's in our studio
today. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. I appreciate you having me here.
Now the way we found this was my wife and I go to Petrifying Springs a lot and heading
back toward East on the lake, we came across this odd shape building. It's kind of different
because of the what's around it. It's in Farmfield and everything and there's homes there
and everything. And we just looked at it and we said, huh, that's interesting. Then we
saw this video online and they talked about hidden gems in Southeast Wisconsin and there
it was. There's the building, the Pritzker Military Museum and Library. And my wife said,
you've got to have those people on the on the show. We're going to find out about this.
So I did. And Scott English is here. What's your, well, first of all, before we begin,
I'm a little background on you. So I am originally from the state of Maryland, graduated
from the University of Maryland. I spent 25 years in public service in Washington, D.C.
in South Carolina. And then I moved into the nonprofit space. I started at the Pritzker
Military Museum and Library last August. My wife and I just relocated from Pennsylvania
here in October. What, bro? So what brought you to the museum? What, what really, say,
do I got to get there? You know, honestly, I started to look into the history of it.
My, I have a service connected family. My father served in the US Marine Corps was at the
Cuban Missile Crisis. My father-in-law was a 22 year Navy veteran, five tours in Vietnam.
And so I've always grown up around veterans. I worked in veterans issues and with the military
when I was in public service. And for me, this is an opportunity. Well, that and the fact
that I have a history degree that I've never put to use. So it was an opportunity for me to do both.
Look at you. You get everything rolled into one here. Exactly. So let's talk about the Pritzker
Military Museum and Library. What is it exactly? So we're a museum dedicated to the citizen soldier.
We started off really as a way for Colonel Jennifer Pritzker, who is our founder.
She said that name one more time. Colonel Jennifer Pritzker.
Jennifer Pritzker. Okay. And that's why the name came from okay. That's correct. She is our
founder. This started really as a way for her to deal with her books. She had a book collection
of about 10,000 books. And she started a library. And the next day, you know, they started having
talks and then people started donating things. And it went from that and it's grown into a book
collection of 70,000 now in our library and about 40,000 archival items that are dedicated to the
citizen soldier. That is what we focus on. And this is a museum. It's set apart from the library.
The museum has what uniforms. So we have everything from uniforms, personal correspondence,
metals, trunks. We have work. We have propaganda. We have wartime posters. We have any
imaginable thing you can come up with. How long did it take to put this museum together?
So we've been around for about 23 years. Really? We have evolved from the library into a museum
in Library. We relocated to Kenosha really summers in 2024. So we've been here for about
two years now. You can do research there as well, huh? You can do research. In fact, you can do
research not only on military history, but also on military service. So people who serve.
Let's talk about the architecture of the building itself, because it is unusual. Yes.
Who did that? Who designed that? So Helmet Jan is the designer of the building. It was done
through Jan in Chicago. Helmet unfortunately passed away just after the building was completed in 2023.
He was hit by a automobile while it was on his bicycle. But the design of the building is very
intentional. So it was inspired really by a couple of different items. One is a Higgins boat,
which is a landing craft that was used in World War II. Also, an aircraft carrier. If you look
at the top of it, it looks very much like an aircraft carrier. It does. Yeah. And then there's also
elements of a tank in there. They wanted to be clear that it was inspired by, but not necessarily
representative of any one thing. You know, my dad was served in World War four years in World War
two. He was in the Pacific theater. He was a Navy tail gunner. And I have at home his
dress uniform. I can't believe how heavy it was. I mean, if you have a bad back, you're in trouble
with that. So we had it. It's all clean. He's got all his ribbons on there. He's got everything
on there. And I at home on a display in the living room I have is he has two distinguished flying
cross metals. He's got the metal of the bronze star on the second one. Wow. And hanging up in my
studio at home, I have his three accommodations laminated to get from forest to all the secretary
of the Navy for saving the lives of 800 men. That's amazing. There was a battleship was being
strafe by Japanese planes. And my father's crew went in there and just took them all on,
shot him down. And everybody was safe. The plane, my father was in got shot. So they had landed
somewhere and give this thing fixed. His pilot was 26 years old. He thought he was an old man
because my father was 17. He said, who's this ancient guy in the and years later during the
reunions, he couldn't talk to this guy enough about how you managed to land these planes, fix it
up three times, shot down, fix it up and take off again. They built a runway on the islands and they
took off again. And there's a picture in the US Navy Memorial. And I'll show you during the
break here with my dad. And he's an old man in the picture. They dedicated it. And there's this
flight crew with the actual plane, the PBY plane that he, they flew. And I said, were you scared?
He thought I was too stupid to be scared. I was 17 years old. They told me, sit here in the
turret and just shoot when you see something. And my dad is a hero. He's a war hero. And
never talked about it until later in his later years when he went to reunions and stuff. Then he
told me a little bit about it. But they just, I found that out with people during World War II,
they just didn't talk about it a lot. I don't know why. It's really, actually, if you look across
the span of time, it's really not uncommon for people who've served it particularly in a conflict
to have difficulty sharing that story with someone who wasn't there. You know, we just hosted an event
at Town Hall just a couple of nights ago with Jeremy Hopson. And we have two combat veterans who
were there talking about PTSD and addictions and things like that. And the thing they kept saying
over and over again is when veterans come home again, they've got to keep connected to their
community because when they want to be able to talk about the things they're going through,
they need someone who understands where they've been. And also who can say, you know, by the way,
I've gone through this too. And so that's why we deal with a lot of time. That's why we tell
these stories because often I had a woman that night who came to me and she said, you know, I have
all my dad's correspondence from when he was in from boot camp in San Diego with the Marine Corps
all the way through his time in Vietnam. And she said, you know, he never brought it out. We didn't
know it existed. His mother kept all of those letters. She gave them to him. He put them under a bed,
even my mother didn't know they existed. And so she took them all out. She scanned them in so that
all the family could have copies of it. And then she's got them in binders. And I said, I
really would ask if you would be willing to give those to us at some point. And so she's
going to talk to her mother. But we that's what we want to be able to keep are those types of personal
correspondence because they give you a better window into what's going on in the lives of a soldier
particularly during combat than anything that you'll ever hear other words. My dad before he
he was in the San Diego, which now Miramar, that's what it is today. But there was San Diego flight
school. So they're giving like you can 10 hours. You know, we're not doing your job in your
because he he he will left high school and he joined right after Pearl Harbor. So he was there
at the very beginning. And they were desperate to get these people out there. So he recorded this
little record in a booth. And there's my father's 17 years old saying, Mom, I love you. I'm going
back. I will be back. So I listened to this record. It was in my grandmother's apartment in Brooklyn.
And when she passed away, I said, I'm with that record. He said, he wrote out.
My God. I know that was my father's voice. It's 17 years old. We're talking to Scott English,
the president of the Pritzker Military Museum and library in summers. We got to get the word out
about this place. Now I have the exact location here. The exact address is just had it in my hand,
the sec. Oh, here it is. It's a 104 75 12th Street in Kenosha. That's what that that's the
address they give. But it's actually in summers, right? That's right. It's in the village of summers.
So what do how do people get what's the easiest way to get there? So if you're driving down
in 94, if you're going towards Chicago, you can take the exit. I think it's, I want to say 342 now.
I suddenly blank on that. What's the road? You know, it's, well, it's just 12 streets,
what it's called. Well straight. Okay. And you'll find, if you google it, you'll find it. Yes.
And sometimes just just for record, we used to be in Chicago. We relocated it to Kenosha two
years ago. So sometimes we're still fighting this battle of, they still give a downtown Chicago
address, but all of our museum holdings are now in Kenosha Chicago.
I shouldn't say that because our signal gets down to Chicago. So I shouldn't say that. Okay.
What are the hours? Do you know? I have them here. So we're open Thursday through Saturday
from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. This summer, we will be opening on Sundays as well. And so, but if you go
to the website, Pritzker Military dot org, you'll be able to get all of our hours and all of the
events that are going on. We do have a couple of events coming up this month still.
Yeah, we're talking about the Memorial Day one. Yeah. What's the cost to get in?
So it's $5 to get in unless you're a military. That's it. Just $5. What a deal.
It's, I feel like I'm, I feel like you're ripping me off. And the great thing about it is,
we don't keep, unlike a lot of other museums, we don't have permanent exhibits that we keep
in there right now. And so we change out usually about every six months or so.
We are bringing in an exhibit that starts in June. It's focused on George Washington,
as it's time is the commanding general of the continental army. You know a lot about George
Washington, the president, but no one really talks about its time as the commanding general.
So we have an exhibit called Among Us troops that will go up. And it's really a slice of life
of what it was like to serve in the continental army back when we were fighting the revolution.
So it's perfect for the 250th. And it's very educational. We'll have a great number of
artifacts in there, including a musket. So you'll be able to see all sorts of things that are
time appropriate for celebration of our, the founding of our nation. Well, my final resting
place is going to be in the Union Grove Memorial Cemetery. And in there, they have an American
Revolutionary War vet very there. And I don't think it gets any more earlier than that. That's
about the beginning. But you have to see his gravies right there up front. And he was in the
American Revolutionary War. Isn't that something? And he's right there. I mean, that's something.
Well, and I hate to say this because it's like, who's your favorite child?
It doesn't look not a good question to ask. What's the most prized possession you have in the
in the museum that you can't believe you have your hands on it? You know, we have the
Medal of Honor that Woody Williams earned in World War II. Woody Williams was a marine that served
in the Pacific during World War II. He was at the Battle of Iwo Jima. And he held off a platoon
of Japanese soldiers with a flamethrower. And you know, saved lives of many as a result of that.
Now, there are other stories around Woody that are positively amazing. But we have, but when
as he got older, he decided that he wanted the Pritzker Military Museum and Library to be the
home to his Medal of Honor. So we have those medals and we have all the things that belong in
his collection. And that, you know, we're working now to build a permanent exhibit to all of Woody's
collection. We had Medal of Honor Day in just this past March. And we had Al Lynch in from
Gernie Illinois. Al earned the Medal of Honor in Vietnam. Do you ever get too much stuff? Because
everybody's got something from the military career. Is it too much after a while? Well,
you don't know where to store it. So we have to be careful because, you know, uniforms we now
are looking for variations because we have a lot of military uniforms from the 20th century,
particularly. And so we always tell people, listen, reach out to us. You know, every, you know,
my dad's Marine Corps uniform is precious to me, but it's not precious to our museum. But,
you know, I will keep it for as long as I want, but then we'll have to figure out a way to deal
with it after that. Typically, when people find come across things like that, they want to be able
to put them in a museum and we want to help them with that. We may not be able to take it, but we
can probably direct them to an appropriate place. Yeah, because I, when my time comes, I don't know
who to leave my phone. I don't want to see them throw my father's distinguished flying cross
medals in the garbage. I don't want to see his accommodations in a, in a waste landfill. I don't
see his uniform sent out just into the garbage. I want to make sure somebody takes care of that
stuff because it is history. Absolutely. And my father was a war hero. Let's talk about the
Memorial Day special day you have coming up for the Britzker Museum and library. So Saturday,
May 23rd, we are going to do Memorial Day. The idea is to hold a community event that's both
reverent to those who were killed in action and also be able to bring people together in the
community. We'll have a ceremony at 11 a.m. where we'll have some speakers come in, do some
talks. Colonel Britzker will be on hand. She's our founders. She'll be there. Oh, she's, oh, that's
good. Yeah. And she served in the Army for eight years in the Illinois National Guard for about
12 years after that retired as Lieutenant Colonel. And so she's got a lot of experience in the
military herself. And we'll have all of our veteran service organizations in the area will be
there as well. We'll do a wreath laying and we'll do a very reverent event. And then we'll have some
community activities, family friendly activities that we'll be able to do as well. And what time,
when do that's on the Saturday, the 23rd, Saturday, the 23rd. And that's at what time now? So the
program starts at 11 a.m. So make sure you get in there a little early, but we'll you will have
a memorial wall so people can write down messages for people. We'll have events for children. We'll
have, we'll have other community of tables out set up out there. We'll have like the American
Legion and a bunch of other folks out there just giving information out and you know joining us
for the day. Welcome everybody to the museum. Every memorial day for about 20 years, I guess. We
go out to the Union Grove Memorial Cemetery and my my father-in-law is buried there. He was
in the US Marines and every year they celebrate or memorialize one person. If they die that year
in combat, wherever they die, even if they weren't in combat, they they honor them. And one year,
if they didn't have anybody and at all years, I think you do my father-in-law do my father-in-law.
If this memorial they were doing your father-in-law and they do a gun salute, it's the veterans,
the foreign wars we have W. American Legion post and they do this every year and we go out there
and it's really touching you know because they have a high school to play taps and you start
to think about all those people that went out and thought they were coming home and they never
came home. Right. And they never thought that this would be their end. And some they never
found somewhere just gone. That's just that's the way it is in war and it's a horrible thing war.
And I will tell you this. So one of the things we're working on right now, we're bringing in an
exhibit that will be there in September. It's called Above and Beyond. This is it's a 10 feet wide
by 41 feet long exhibit. It's dog tags and there was a dog tag made for every service member killed
in Vietnam. Outside of the wall in Washington, D.C., it is the only exhibit that has the names of
every soldier we lost. That's terrific. That's terrific. It's currently at the Harold Washington
Library and we're and thanks to people like Wind Trust and we're working with Gateway Technical
College to build the installation. So we've got Vietnam veterans, we've got other veterans,
we've got students all working together to build this installation. It's going to be hanging in
our museum for at least two years and we're that's going to be quite a thing to be hold as well.
It's got a tablet as well so you can look up names, find out where the dog tag is on the exhibit.
It'll have information about the person that that was killed. I watched people interact with this
tablet in Chicago one day and I had a lady that was there. Her uncle was killed in Vietnam. He held
her before he left. He got to name her and she had never met him. It's comforting to know that
there's somebody out there preserving our history because you need it saved. I mean you just can't
throw this stuff out. People, generations who are being born today or someday going to look back and
say what was that thing we did in the 1940s? Well, we did something out there. I don't know
where that was or something with Germany and Japan. We're going to find out because you've preserved
it. That's a good thing. Bless you for doing that. That's very nice. Scott English is the, by the way,
what is the, it's Memorial Day. It's the actually Saturday the 23rd. That's correct. It's at 11 a.m.
At the Pritzker Military Museum and Library in summers. It's on Highway 12th Street. You'll see it.
I mean, when you see it, you'll know it. It doesn't melt into the country side.
Just go to Pritzker Military.org and you'll have all the information you need.
Yeah. Google it to Pritzker. It's just like it sounds. P-R-I-T-Z-E-R. Pritzker, no. Let's
spell it wrong. P-R-I-T-Z-E-K-E-R. K-E-R, yeah. Pritzker. I got the first part, right? If you google
that part, you'll get the risk. That's right. Thank you very much. Scott English President
to the Pritzker Military Museum and Library in summers. Thanks for coming by. Thanks for having me.
I'll be back again. This was good.
