Rocky Point military history museum expands, fueled by donations of memorabilia

When he opened a military history museum three years ago in Rocky Point's restored train station, Richard Acritelli hoped the 600-square-foot space would have enough room for hundreds of wartime mementos donated by local residents.

It didn't.

People from all over Long Island donated so many military relics — more than a century's worth of weapons, flags and photographs collected by veterans during tours from Europe and the Mideast to Southeast Asia and the South Pacific — that museum organizers quickly made plans to expand.

The museum, on King Road and run by Rocky Point's Veterans of Foreign Wars post, was rededicated with a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday, three days before Memorial Day.

“We’ve more than doubled our square footage,” Acritelli, the museum's founder and curator, said in a telephone interview Thursday. “It’s a lot more elevated. ... We have exhibits up on the ceiling.”

Yogi Berra to Albert Einstein

The museum opened Dec. 7, 2023 — Pearl Harbor Day — after VFW members raised $60,000 to fund initial operations. The museum is largely run by volunteers, including Acritelli, a high school and college history teacher and Army reservist.

Exhibits include items about George Washington’s Long Island spy trail, a Sept. 11 memorial, military uniforms and baseball memorabilia from World War II veterans Yogi Berra and Ted Williams. Another exhibit recalls the role played by Albert Einstein in developing the atomic bomb while he stayed on the North Fork.

The museum has hosted “thousands and thousands of visitors” since opening, Acritelli said.

Organizers started with more than 1,000 artifacts, but donations kept coming over the last three years as word of the museum spread, he said.

The expansion was built at no cost to the museum by volunteers from more than a dozen contractors coordinated by Jericho-based B2K Development.

Acritelli said the project cost otherwise would have been “a lot higher than I could ever imagine,” adding “it would have taken a very, very, very long time” to raise the money for construction.

In a statement, B2K principal and construction president Jon Weiss said the expanded museum will “further preserve our military heritage, while providing a valuable educational resource for the Rocky Point community and Long Island as a whole."

Family relics rediscovered

Acritelli said recent donations included Japanese, German and Italian rifles from World War II, swords from World War I, bayonets from the 1870s and North Vietnamese flags.

He attributed the largesse to baby boomers stumbling upon their parents' and grandparents' war treasures while cleaning out basements and attics.

“They held onto these things for years and they realized it doesn’t do anyone any good in a box or a crate somewhere,” he said.

One of those donors was Doug Cody, of Nesconset, who said he contributed 20 to 25 items that belonged to his late father, James Robert Cody, a World War II veteran who served as a seaman first class in the Pacific on the USS Higbee and USS Lexington.

“I was looking for some place where I can sell them,” Cody, 76, said in a phone interview. He changed his mind when he learned about the museum.

Items he donated included knives and a Japanese flag. 

“I knew that they were important," Cody said. “The most important thing is not just for people to learn what people tell them, but sometimes you need to see things" so that events long ago and far away "seem more real and more tangible to other human beings."