CATAWBA, Va. – “It is a sense our duty to pass on our knowledge, our beliefs and so forth, to those who follow us,” Navy Reserve veteran Lee Anthony said.
To say Lee Anthony holds a part of history would be an understatement.
Lee is the owner of tens of thousands of pieces of war memorabilia - spanning hundreds of years.
“You come across something that you like and that you think should be retained, and it sort of grows and grows,” Anthony said.
It started as a few things scattered around his house, then his job, then his church — until he bought some land, with a barn in Catawba.
“Gradually, room by room, it has undergone a change from a barn to a museum,” he said.
10 News sat down with Lee to ask why it was so important to him to have a place where he could not only display the history, but just keep it for so many people to see, for so many years to come.
“There are lessons to be learned. Again, we come back to the concept that as we said earlier, those people that don’t study history are doomed to repeat it,” he said.
In one of the rooms dedicated to World War II, there’s a section dedicated to some of our hometown heroes — the Bedford Boys.
He has a picture showing the Bedford Boys, but with a unique twist he tells us shows a stark contrast, meant to hit people close to home.
“The gray coloration, those who passed on June 6, 1944. The others survived.”
The driving purpose behind Lee’s collection? Honoring service and sacrifice.
“You collect them because they tell a story, and so you listen to that story, you retain it,” he said.