Mineral Wells is continuing to assess what was lost after an EF-3 tornado tore through the city, but the damage goes far beyond homes and businesses.<\/p>\n
Parts of the city\u2019s deep military history have been damaged or destroyed, including historic aircraft and memorials honoring those who served.<\/p>\n
At the National Vietnam War Museum, the storm left a visible and emotional impact.<\/p>\n
Ean Tillett, the museum\u2019s executive director, says the destruction is difficult to process.<\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially with a job centered around preserving history, it\u2019s hard to see,\u201d Tillett said.<\/p>\n
The tornado damaged multiple historic helicopters on display. One was even ripped from its frame and thrown hundreds of feet.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt ripped it off the airframe, flung it about 600 feet,\u201d Tillett said.<\/p>\n
The museum\u2019s memorial garden was also torn apart, leaving what remains scattered among debris.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can always replant and we can always rebuild, but it hurts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For Tillett, the loss goes beyond physical items.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving met most of these people, or having met the people who\u2019ve survived the people that planted it, it\u2019s kind of tough to understand, tough to confront,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But the damage stretches beyond the museum grounds.<\/p>\n
About a mile away sits what was once Fort Wolters, formerly Camp Wolters, a key training site during the Vietnam War where nearly every U.S. Army helicopter pilot trained before deploying overseas.<\/p>\n
Now, much of that historic landscape has also been heavily damaged.<\/p>\n
A memorial to Medal of Honor recipients from the area is now part of the city\u2019s long road to recovery.<\/p>\n
For those working to preserve that legacy, the mission has shifted.<\/p>\n
Plans to improve the museum are now on hold as resources are redirected toward repairs.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we were putting money back into property improvements, so now we have to shift from property improvements to repairs,\u201d Tillett said.<\/p>\n
For a city so deeply tied to its military past, the storm didn\u2019t just leave physical destruction, it struck at its identity.<\/p>\n
Now, the focus turns to saving what remains and rebuilding the history that defines Mineral Wells.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mineral Wells is continuing to assess what was lost after an EF-3 tornado tore through the city, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,36662,12367],"class_list":["post-276595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-palo-pinto-county","tag-tornadoes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}