Harold Steelman of Little Rock has been collecting World War II memorabilia for 70 years.
On Aug. 15, the former coach and Arkansas Razorback football player was honored for donating his Traveling Military Museum of Arkansas to the Vilonia Museum of Veterans and Military History. Vilonia Mayor James Firestone declared Harold Steelman Day, and friends and well-wishers visited Steelman at the museum throughout the day.
“Mr. Steelman’s donation about doubled our inventory,” said Linda Hicks, co-founder of the museum with her husband, Paul. “We have about twice as much as we had. We will have to build a storage facility for part of it.
“We are thrilled to have it. A lot of the things he donated we would have had a hard time finding. There are close to 200 items. Just about anything you can think of is here.”
The veterans museum opened at its new location at 53 N. Mount Olive Road in April. Located first in an old house on Church Street, the museum was destroyed by the area’s April 2014 tornado and had to be rebuilt. Most of the items in the museum were saved.
“This is a great museum,” Steelman said. “I had talked to some people who knew about it, and I contacted Linda about my collection. She was very interested in it.
“I talked to my children and grandchildren, and they thought it was a fine idea to donate my things to the museum. They had no room for it. I had it in storage for years. Now it has a permanent home, where people can see it.”
Steelman, 82, grew up in Pine Bluff.
“My dad was a World War I veteran,” Steelman said. “I became aware of his service during his participation in the American Legion’s observance of Armistice Day on Nov. 11 each year, when they would sell poppies.
“I wasn’t very old on Dec. 7, 1941, when we entered World War II, but we lived near the railroad tracks in Pine Bluff, and I saw the troops coming through town on the trains. There was a side track where the trains would often pull off and wait. As a child, I joined others at the train track, and the soldiers would ask us to go across the street to a small store and buy things for them.
“They would pay us for what they wanted, but I started asking them if they had a patch they could give to me. That’s how I began my collection. I have no idea how many patches I collected — Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force — I had hundreds.”
Steelman said his brother, the late Bob Steelman, served in the Pacific Ocean theater during World War II.
“I can remember vaguely watching my mother waiting for the mail,” Steelman said. “I do remember watching the Western Union man deliver telegrams. All the wives and mothers were waiting for any messages from their loved ones.
“My brother returned home safe from the war. He served in the battles of Okinawa and Peleliu.”
Steelman attended Little Rock Junior College (now the University of Arkansas at Little Rock) and went on to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, graduating in 1955.
“I was a member of the 1954 and 1955 Razorback football teams,” he said. “They called us ‘the 25 Little Pigs.’ We won the 1954 Southwest Conference football championship.”
Steelman went on to coach several high school teams in Arkansas and coached at the collegiate level for more than 24 years, including at Arkansas Tech University from 1980-85. He managed War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock for 13 years before retiring in 1999.
Steelman was the project creator and lead interviewer for In Their Words, AETN’s World War II oral history project. He personally interviewed more than 100 Arkansas World War II veterans.
Steelman’s World War II collection and other memorabilia from the American Revolutionary War through the present day can be seen at the Vilonia Museum of Veterans and Military History during normal business hours. The museum is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and from 1-4 p.m. Sundays.