LAKEPORT — As the Joy Madeiros Veterans Museum nears its first birthday, the local veterans who created the museum from scratch last year are working to make sure what they’ve built can stay in its current home.
Flanked by a laundromat and a bank in the corner space of the Eleventh Street business plaza in Lakeport, the museum is home to an extensive collection of real and replicated uniforms, antique medallions and badges, decommissioned weapons, and galleries of photographs and records that detail the rich history of veterans from Lake County and surrounding areas.
Joy Madeiros was the first casualty from Lake County during World War I, and the all volunteer-run museum is his namesake.
There Friday to tell the story of the museum’s inception in the summer of 2018 and its growth since then were five Korean and Vietnam War vets who have volunteered countless hours to make the museum a reality, and to keep it that way: Darrel Bittle, Robert Bell, Griff Ratterree, Chuck Nolan and Rudy Vega.
Before finding their current home, many of the museum’s precious objects were cached in the homes of these men.
Bell, an Army vet and Cahto Tribe member who fought in the Vietnam War, told the story of the museum’s most recent addition—a Native American veterans display comprised of a wall full of photographs of Native Lake and Mendocino County residents who have served in every war since World War I, and a mannequin dressed in Plains Indian battle garb collected by Bell and others.
“Native Americans serve more per capita in the military than any other group,” Bell remarked. The dozens of images of the faces of local Native American vets illustrated his point. Bell is a tribal veteran representative for the Eagle Warriors, a Native American veterans group.
The Native American veterans exhibit, which upon installation filled the last blank wall left in the museum’s brightly lit, cavernous space, is the latest in a constantly growing collection. Local residents with keepsakes and antique military items come in regularly to donate their things. But the physical collection is only one aspect of what has been preserved at the Joy Madeiros Veterans Museum.
After the Lakeport Veterans of Foreign Wars location folded two years ago due to a lack of people to keep it running, Bittle said, he and other vets were left without a gathering place. The museum has been able to fill that role for many, having hosted social events, museum tours, law enforcement training sessions, and even a town hall-style meeting to address the many issues facing veterans in Lake County that was hosted by U.S. Congressmen Mike Thompson and John Garamendi.
Bittle, a Vietnam veteran who served in the Navy, said outreach has been a challenge for the museum, noting that “a lot of people still don’t know where we are.” Walking along a wall covered with military jackets that serves as a catalogue of uniforms from WWI to the present, Bittle said he wants to host more events at the museum, like school field trips.
Bittle worked for seven years, with help from many other veterans, to collect the history and objects that now make up the museum. He said Friday that while he would like to find a permanent home for the museum eventually, “we’d like to stay here as long as we can.”
“We have until the end of June to do it,” he said last week. Without funding of its own, the museum has no place to move should it need to vacate its current location, Bittle said.
A free one-year lease of the museum’s current space, which was donated by Albertson’s is nearing its end this summer, but Bittle is hopeful the company will continue the lease for another two years.
“This space we’ve got here is a perfect space,” Bittle said.
The Joy Madeiros Veterans Museum is open to the public from 10–2 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, or by appointment. The museum is located at 857 11th St., Lakeport. More information can be found at the museum’s eponymous Facebook page.
