The Relic Room is a client that keeps us pretty busy at ADCO — even when the museum is temporarily closed to the general public.
Since the start of 2024, Brad Warthen — ADCO’s resident history buff — has been enjoying managing and expanding the museum’s free public lectures on military history. The name of these live programs was changed to Noon Debriefs (formerly Lunch and Learns), and the schedule was expanded from monthly to fortnightly.
Normally, these programs are presented in the museum’s Education Room. But that is currently not an option because the museum is undergoing some renovation, and the staff is busy restoring thousands of irreplaceable artifacts of wars in which South Carolinians have participated through our history. So until October, the Relic Room is closed to general admission.
We hated to see these live programs go away, because we had been excited to see attendance growing fairly steadily in recent months. Also, with the museum’s displays and artifacts closed except to organized tours, we didn’t want the public to forget the Relic Room is an unparalleled educator regarding our state’s military history. We needed some way to keep the Relic Room front-of-mind.
Fortunately, Richland Library has generously provided a venue for the program off-site. Eventually, we hope to stage programs in other local locations as well.
The first such off-site program was held in the main library’s Theater, a spacious venue with stadium seating and excellent audiovisual infrastructure, on June 28.
These lectures usually feature guest speakers — historians, enthusiasts and local war veterans — but for this special event Joe Long, the museum’s curator of education, was the presenter. And he was a hit, as usual. In introducing Joe at the library, Brad said, “I’ve never heard a lecture delivered by Joe that wasn’t fascinating.” And after June 28, he still hasn’t.
His topic was was the ironically named “Hanoi Hilton,” and the American aviators who were held prisoners and tortured for years on end during the Vietnam War. (The majority of Noon Debriefs in recent months have been about Vietnam, in keeping with the great interest in that period stirred by the major exhibit the Relic Room recently unveiled, “A War With No Front Lines: South Carolina and the Vietnam War, 1965-1973.”)
A star guest in the audience was one of those prisoners of war, Wally Newcomb. Lt. Col. Newcomb was an F-105 pilot with the 13th Tactical Fighter Squadron until he was forced to eject over North Vietnam on August 3, 1967. He spent 2,051 days in captivity. On June 28, he shared some stories from that ordeal.
But we don’t have to tell you the details in writing. You can watch the full video of the program here on Facebook.
Now, we’re looking forward to the second program at Richland Library, which is coming up on Aug. 16. Joe will be the speaker again, only this time he’s digging further back in history to tell the story of “The Unpronounceable Patriot: Thaddeus Kosciuszko.” Who was that? Join us on that Friday next month, and find out.
Wally Newcomb shares his experiences as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
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