Roger Wortman, the Alaska Veterans Memorial Museum board of director's president, discusses the needed changes in the bylaws at the Nov. 5 meeting at VFW Post 9785. STAR PHOTO BY MARY M. RALL

The vote came Saturday at VFW Post 9785's annual meeting in Eagle River.

The museum board was originally established in 2001 and has been working toward establishing the museum ever since, said Roger Wortman, president of the museum's board of directors.

However, until now, a majority of the approximately $100,000 in the museum's treasury has been gained from grants. That's due to a technicality in the museum's original bylaws that didn't allow for gaming as a means for raising funds.

As beneficial as the grants have been in increasing the museum's treasury, they are few and far between while gaming events such as raffles and split the pot activities can actively be pursued as needed, Wortman said.

"We thought we had the bylaws correct for a nonprofit and charitable (orgainization) such as raffles and gaming," Wortman said. "But the state really got into our bylaws and said we had to change them."

Wortman estimates that a total of $10 million will be necessary to construct the museum, which could be located anywhere from the Mastanuska Valley to Anchorage. The funds raised through gaming will be a small start to building awareness in the community, he said.

"Actually what it does is personalize the museum," said Anchorage Assemblywoman Anna Fairclough of Eagle River, who serves as the museum's treasurer, "Granted they're small fundraisers, and it won't get us to $10 million very fast, but it does give us a basis to create membership and the momentum to go forward to other agencies to ask for additional funding."

According to Wortman, two of the biggest obstacles the museum is facing are a lack of awareness in the community and the budget needed to create that awareness. Gaming will help generate a big enough cash flow so the board can establish a site in Eagle River to help the community see firsthand what the museum is all about and how they can personally contribute to the effort.

"We've been hunting now for about two years, and (Eagle River) space is just outrageous. For every $1,500 a month we'd have to fork over, we'd have to replace that," Wortman said.

Once the museum office is established, volunteers would be on site to introduce individuals to the project and sign up new members, Wortman said.

"Many people don't know we don't have a Veteran's Memorial Museum in the state of Alaska," Fairclough said. "We're just trying to raise that awareness so we can have exposure."

Wortman said he feels confident a museum will be built and will serve as a means of education and awareness for the Alaskan community.

"Young kids don't understand where they get their freedom from. Establishing this museum to recognize the individual efforts of Alaska veterans will help do that," Wortman said. "They will be able to see the sacrifices these individuals have made for their country to establish their lifestyle. We will try to instill that the freedoms they have today wouldn't be here if it wasn't for these individuals."

Fairclough added that the museum would serve as a reminder and as an honor to the large number of veterans who call Alaska home.

"People, especially retired people, tend to visit monumental sites...What we would like to do is create a tribute to those Alaskans for their country," Fairclough said. "There are 20,000 veterans in the state of Alaska in a population of almost 670,000, so we have great representation from our armed services."

However, while there are a great number of veterans in the state, Fairclough admits that the clock toward recording their history is ticking away, making the need for museum funding all the more important.

"We've actually lost three different board members now that have passed away and it just brings to light how quickly some of those people who've served this great nation can be taken away from us," Fairclough said. "So, we have a very small membership, somewhere between 40 and 100 depending on the year. To already have losses inside of that membership just means that we have to push forward much quicker to get this history recorded."

This article published in The Alaska Star on Thursday, November 10, 2005.