Heroes Museum to Re-Open for One-Day Event Saturday

Historic Marker Dedication Part of Event To Showcase Improvements at the Facility

The Texas Heroes Museum at 171 S. Main St. in La Grange will be open to the public this Saturday, Sept. 19, for the first time since March 21 when COVID-19 restrictions were started.

Saturday will be a special one-day event, highlighted by the dedication of a new historical marker for the Fayette County Old Jail at 1 p.m. The marker was obtained by the Fayette County Historical Commission.

The event will be an opportunity to get a glimpse of the improvements that have been made during the past six months. The closure has allowed a reorganization of the museum. “We have been able to make changes that would have been impossible to accomplish during normal operations,” said Charles Murray, past president and current museum manager. “Our growth has always been slow. The pandemic downtime allowed us to make a giant leap. Although we received the 2020 Readers’ Choice Award for Best Museum, we now have an even better museum than when the voters saw it. Even now we have additional improvements in the works.”

Perhaps the most striking change is the room that was originally the sheriff’s office was remodeled to give it the look of a sheriff’s office. Artifacts and photographs of Texas law enforcement personnel were moved to this room. The storage cabinets that were in the sally port hallway were moved to make space for new displays that focus on the birth of Texas. New display cases were added to the main cellblock to exhibit additional artifacts.

For now, the museum will be open only on this Saturday. “Our museum is operated entirely with volunteers who are mostly in the high-risk age group. We just can’t take the risk of catching the disease.

Even before the pandemic, we needed more volunteers to be docents. After the pandemic subsides, it will be an easy job to be a docent. We have added more signage to make self-guided tours gratifying and more informative.”

Murray says the best way to get updates and find out when the museum will return to normal operation is to like TexasHeroesMuseum on Facebook.

A “virtual tour” of the museum, produced by Kreische Brewery and Monument Hill State Historic Site, will be available for viewing on Saturday mid-afternoon at www.friendsofkreischebrewery.org/texasheroesday.