WVVA Hometown Hero: Tim Wheeler walks in his father’s footsteps in Veterans Museum
HINTON, W.Va. (WVVA) - For the last four years Tim Wheeler has been the President of the Veterans Memorial Museum of Southern West Virginia in Summers County.
His nomination letter came to us from Laura Lilly, Assistant Executive Director of the Hinton Hope Foundation. Lilly pointed to Wheeler’s tireless work with the veteran’s museum in Hinton. Wheeler says he’s not motivated by the idea of accolades, “Yeah, I was surprised cause I don’t do it for myself, I do it for the veterans and the military and the museum. That’s what I do it for, not to be recognized. Because we wouldn’t be here today if it wouldn’t have been for them, sacrificing their lives,” said Wheeler.
The 60-year-old says there’s a real, personal motivation to his devotion to the museum. He was recruited by his late father who passed away in 2014, just two years after convincing Wheeler to get involved. Both Wheeler’s father and grandfather served in the military, and he says he hopes they are looking down on him with pride, “I hope he’s up there thinking I’m doing good that I keep going with it. I have a lot of family in here that served, " Wheeler said.
Wheeler says the work here is vital, because in these times, they get to fill in some gaps about wars that are vanishing from school curriculums, “It makes you feel really good because they took most of the history out of schools that needs to be taught. A lot of it,” said Wheeler. He adds the wide-eyed wonder of the youngsters as they soak in the history contained in the museum is all the payment, he needs for the countless hours he gives to this museum, “The thrill of it and seeing people come in and visit the museum. Cause we had a class, I think it was 34 a couple of weeks ago, from Hinton area, they were second graders. And they were asking all kinds of questions. They were eager to learn it, and I was really excited because they were wanting their questions about it.” said Wheeler.
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