The Winnebago Historical Society is to participate in the Blue Stars Museum project for 2013. The project offers free admission to all active-duty military personnel and their families from Memorial Day through Labor Day. It focuses especially on the almost 1 million children who have at least one parent deployed in the military, giving families a chance to visit museums this summer when many will have limited resources and limited time to be together.
Free admission is available to any bearer of a Geneva Convention common access card, a DD Form 1173 identification card or a DD Form 1173-1 identification card, which includes active-duty U.S. military: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, as well as members of the National Guard and Reserve, U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, NOAA Commissioned Corps and up to five family members (spouse, children, aunts, uncles, grandparents). If military members are deployed, family members are still eligible with identification.
The Winnebago Historical Society is housed in the 1899 Mansion Museum at 336 N. Clark St., in Forest City, and it oversees Heritage Park, a 91-acre open-air museum on the south edge of Forest City. The society’s mission is to educate children and adults through the Mansion Museum, reintroduce families to their past through the Leibrand-Whiteis Research Center, and recreate the lives and livelihoods of our ancestors at Heritage Park of North Iowa. www.mansionmuseumforestcityiowa.org