Pillar One
Safeguard what they carried
Artifacts of this generation are being lost at speed, not to disaster but to ordinary attrition: an estate sale, a house fire, a grandchild who does not know what the box in the attic is. The Foundation takes custody of what remains of this family's service, conserves it properly, catalogues it, and keeps it together as one collection rather than letting it scatter.
What the collection holds
Uniforms, arms, papers, photographs, decorations.
The material of this generation is disappearing, and it is rarely disappearing to anything dramatic. It goes in an estate sale where nobody recognizes what is in the box. It goes to a house fire, or a flood, or a leaking attic. It goes because the grandchild who inherited it does not know that the folded wool in the bottom of the trunk is a service coat, or that the papers underneath it are the only surviving account of where a man was in 1944.
What the Foundation takes in, it keeps together. A collection that is split between four households is four collections, each of which will be lost separately. Held as one, catalogued, conserved and insured, it is a record.
Firearms carried in combat are part of that record and are held under the same standard as everything else, subject to all applicable federal and Louisiana law governing their transfer, storage and display.
Standards of custody
The terms the Foundation holds to.
These are the terms under which the Foundation places objects with an exhibiting institution, and the terms on which it accepts objects from a family.
- Ownership is never transferred
- Artifacts placed with the Foundation are held by the Foundation. Where an object is exhibited elsewhere, it goes on loan and nothing more. No title passes, and a loan is never treated as a gift, a donation, or a deaccession.
- Scheduled, all-risk insurance
- Every object is individually scheduled at an agreed value rather than covered by a blanket policy, and it is insured wall to wall — from the moment it leaves its owner's hands to the moment it is returned.
- Condition is recorded before transfer
- Each object is itemized with a written condition report and photographs, agreed and signed by both parties before anything moves. Any change at return that is not in that baseline is presumed to have occurred in the borrower's custody.
- No treatment without written consent
- Nothing is cleaned, repaired, restored, reframed or altered without the owner's prior written consent — with the single exception of emergency stabilization to prevent imminent loss, which must be reported within twenty-four hours.
- Environmental control and security
- Temperature, relative humidity, light levels, security and fire suppression are held to the standards generally accepted in the museum profession — the same standard an institution applies to its own collection.
- Recall on notice
- The Foundation may recall any object at any time on written notice, and it is returned in the condition in which it was received. Return is never withheld for any reason.
Exhibition
A dedicated family display case
An artifact in storage is preserved but silent. The Foundation’s intent is that this collection be seen, in a dedicated family display case within the renovated galleries of a Louisiana military museum, under a long-term loan on the terms above.
That agreement is in negotiation and under review by Louisiana counsel. The Foundation will name the institution here when the agreement is executed and not before.
If you hold something
Talk to the Foundation before you sell it or throw it away.
If you hold material connected to this family — a photograph, a letter, a medal, a uniform, a discharge paper — the Foundation would like to hear from you, whether or not you intend to part with it. A high-resolution scan and an accurate note of what a thing is and where it came from is worth a great deal on its own, and costs you nothing but the object staying exactly where it is.