JROTC, Marines Cut Ribbon On Parkville High Museum

Where can you find replica Marine Corps uniforms from the American Revolution, real ones from the Vietnam era and even a rocket launcher?

A museum in Baltimore, or Washingon D.C. would have those things for sure.

But so would Parkville High School.

Check out photos of some of the items on display in the gallery above.

On Thursday afternoon, the school became the first in the Marines Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program in the Mid-Atlantic to install a museum dedicated to the armed forces.

Captain Michael Long and Master Sergeant James Ruffin, who work in the program at the school, assembled the collection over the course of the last year from a combination of yard sales, their own personal collections, donations from school faculty and students, local museums and the Marine Corps Historical Company.

"I wanted to have the cadets see and be able to feel what we actually had back in that time frame. You can teach them, show them what it was like in a book, but it's not as good as touching it, seeing it and the changes to it," Long said.

"The kids really enjoy it, they’re fascinated with the material as well as the equipment that we bring in," he said.

Students played a role in arranging the displays, and Long said the museum will continue to grow as they are able to acquire new space.

Col. Jim Lenard, the supervisor for the Marines JROTC program in the mid-Atlantic (a region which includes 238 schools from South Carolina to Delaware) was on hand for the ribbon cutting.

"This is the only school that has a Marine Corps museum ... it is unique. It takes men like all these folks—Master Sergeant and Captain Long—to pull it all together. These two got it done," he said.

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