BY JIM MASON

FOR THE FREE LANCE-STAR

Coinciding with Saturday's Harvest Festival in Bowling Green, the Caroline Museum and Cultural Center will open for the day at its new location near the historic county courthouse.

Visitors will find a tribute to Caroline's veterans of all the nation's wars, with a special display of the late Army Maj. Thomas Joseph "Joe" Medley Sr.'s collection of World War II memorabilia.

To everybody around Bowling Green, he was known as Joe Medley, and he played on the Caroline High School football team. He was a 1954 CHS graduate.

His father, Army Master Sgt. Joe Caldwell Medley, was a soldier in World War II. Carrying on a family tradition of military service, the son served as an intelligence officer in the Vietnam War.

Maj. Medley's daughter, Susan Medley Sili, collections chairwoman, set up the display of her father's war-gear objects.

The collection includes a helmet, uniforms, weapons, backpack, a medic's first aid kit and field radios. Also on display are medals awarded to her father for his 1967-68 tour in Vietnam.

"What my dad and his soldiers did in Nam was essentially listening to everything being transmitted all over the world--kind of like monitoring the Internet today for terrorists, only they were doing it with radios," Sili said. "They built what would be today a crude satellite system on top of their van with the radios inside."

After Saturday's opening for the Harvest Festival, the museum will close and reopen for Veterans Day on Nov. 11, Sili said. The museum was formerly housed in a courthouse annex.

"Going forward," she added, "the museum hours have not been determined yet, but we will be open by appointment."