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WWI museum in Kansas City receives big donation of artifacts

As Kansas City’s Liberty Memorial has gained acclaim with its World War I museum, the flow of donated artifacts has also greatly increased.

But officials are reeling from the immensity of a recent gift from the widow of a lifelong collector. A semi-trailer truck was needed to haul in the roughly 1,700 items, most of them related to the ferocious machine guns of that era.

“It was like getting a whole other museum,” said Eli Paul, vice president of museum programs at Liberty Memorial.

It will take months, if not years, to fully absorb the material....

...[T]hey are greatly impressed by the collection amassed over the years by the late Carl H. Hauber, whose father served in the Great War.

“He collected like a curator,” Paul said. “He was collecting the world of the machine gun. Not just the object but the context.”...
Read entire article at AP