The man, the museum

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Joanna M. Kresge
  • 2nd Bomb Wing Public Affairs
BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. --  Motorists drive past it every day. High schools journey hundreds of miles a year to see it. The families of Airmen come from all over the world to pose in front of its mammoth planes. What the thousands of annual visitors may not know was that the dedication of one man made it all possible.

The Eighth Air Force Museum, located on Barksdale Air Force Base, La., home of Air Force Global Strike Command, recently lost its long time curator and founding director Harold D. "Buck" Rigg to a long term illness. While many may have known the man or frequented the museum, how it all came to be is a story in and of itself.

Mr. Rigg's love for aviation began when he was just a boy as he looked up to his father who was a B-52 radar navigator as well as a private pilot.

"Our dad was a private pilot since he was 15 years-old," said Dan Rigg, Mr. Rigg's younger brother. "We spent all of our free time in the air with Dad - we hopped all over as a family going to air shows."

The B-52D that now rests at the Eighth Air Force Museum was flown by Mr. Rigg's father.

"Buck has his dad's flight logs and indeed, his dad flew that B-52D during the Vietnam War," said Mike Kaplan, long time friend.

Later in life, Mr. Rigg attended Louisiana State University to study fine arts while also turning a profit selling aircraft art and prints, when his father stirred his interest in aviation further by introducing him to a project aimed at bringing in historic bombers to be put on display.

Mr. Rigg immersed himself in the project. Once the planes had been brought to Barksdale, he set out to find a location, funding and approval to house the history and artifacts of the Eighth Air Force and Barksdale.

"The museum began very humbly," said David Lay, Eighth Air Force Museum Association president and long time friend. "It was in a single room in what was then the wing headquarters back in the 1970s. He started with just a few display cases and grew it into what it is today."

Over the years, Mr. Rigg's level of dedication did not wavier as the museum moved to its current location, and he attempted to acquire new treasures for the museum.

"He twisted arms, wrote letters, jumped up and down on people's desks, made phone calls to get everything the museum has today," Mr. Lay said. "There is just no way to describe his level of interest and his level of dedication of all things aviation - he loved it to the core of his being. The museum was so much a part of his life that to divorce the two would be unimaginable."

As the museum began to take shape, Mr. Rigg acquired more and more treasures from all over the country.

"I had the privilege of going with him to the Barksdale home, in Goshin Springs, Miss.," Mr. Lay said. "We had permission from the family to go through the house and take whatever historical treasures were there. Until then, I always had a vague concept of what a kid in a candy store meant, but I really understood after seeing Buck in that house. Buck was in seventh heaven there. We took a tremendous amount back with us. It was his concept to create the parlor of the Barksdale home as it was in the early 1900s when Eugene Hoy Barksdale was actually growing up in the house."

After Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Rigg again showed his perseverance when he fought to obtain the podium President George W. Bush spoke from at Barksdale when he addressed the nation after the terrorist attacks.

"After President Bush's stop at Barksdale, Buck's wheels started turning to acquire the items that President Bush used to address the nation," said Mr. Kaplan. "He learned the podium was accidently turned into the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office. Like a bloodhound, he tracked down that podium through Little Rock where it was shipped to and later sold to a high school in Arkansas. A few phone calls later, he received acknowledgement from the school that they indeed had bought a podium and had it in their possession. Buck arranged for a free replacement to be furnished and sent a crew of three for the recovery."

In 2009, Mr. Rigg decided to retire from the museum for health reasons.

"His health was always an issue, and I think it saddened him when he could no longer get up and go to work because he thoroughly enjoyed what he did," Mr. Lay said. "But the ravages of his physical conditions were such that retirement was probably, from a health perspective, the best thing for him."

Though the man behind the museum is no longer there, those who cared for him know he'll never really be gone as long as the Eighth Air Force Museum lives on.

"Buck left a lot of himself in the museum, it was very definitely his museum in the sense that he took personal pride in it," Mr. Lay said. "It was his intent to preserve Eighth Air Force's heritage and to put that heritage on display so that it would never be forgotten and inspire those who came after those who created the Eighth Air Force."

"For 30 years as museum director, Buck ensured that everything his dad stood for -- everything America stood for  -- was available to everyone who walked through the doors of the Eigth Air Force Museum and walked through the air park," Mr. Kaplan said.

Mr. Rigg is survived by his wife, Helen; daughter Lee Slansky and son Trey Birchfield; five grandchildren; brothers Dan, George Rigg and Art Rigg, all of Texas; and uncle, Art Rigg, of Oregon.