Ft. Leonard Wood in August 2005

When I was growing up, my mother would occasionally tell the story of how she drove a Buick from Iowa to visit my father at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri after he had been called up for active duty in 1941. My father, Donald M. Parrish, was a Second Lieutenant at the time, and my parents had been married in 1940. The fort was built starting December 1940 on a round the clock basis as the United States prepared itself in case America was drawn into WWII.

I noticed that Fort Leonard Wood was on my path returning from Dallas to Chicago and decided to check it out.

It is a huge fort of about 100 square miles with over 13,000 people living there. It was named for a famous general and medical doctor, Leonard Wood. You get a pass at the gate, and then drive to the museum complex.