Military Vehicle Show brings out the olive drab in enthusiasts

By Randa Wagner

Vet­er­ans and mil­i­tary enthu­si­asts turned out for the Fifth Annual Mid-Ohio Mil­i­tary Vehi­cle Show held at the Car­di­nal Cen­ter Camp­ground Fri­day and Saturday.

“We’ve had a good atten­dance from local peo­ple and good weather,” said a pleased Brian Wolf of Card­ing­ton, who is also Vice Pres­i­dent of the spon­sor­ing Buck­eye Mil­i­tary Vehi­cle Club. “Last year the heat was oppressive.”

This year, 42 ven­dors showed up with their dis­plays of vin­tage mil­i­tary vehi­cles, clas­sic Willys jeeps, and with parts and sur­plus items for all things ‘Olive Drab.’ Putting the show together involves avail­abil­ity of ven­dors, weather, and the inter­est of the public.

“The way this started was through the Buck­eye Mil­i­tary Vehi­cle Club, a group of peo­ple who have sim­i­lar inter­ests in restor­ing mil­i­tary vehi­cles and hon­or­ing the her­itage of where they came from,” Wolf explained. “Through the aus­pices of that, it took sev­eral moti­vated peo­ple to sit down and say, ‘What’s it going to take to put this together?’ That pro­vided the ini­tial fund­ing to buy the adver­tis­ing and, luck­ily, the arrange­ment we have through Jack Fish­burn and the Car­di­nal Cen­ter has allowed us to keep the show going in with­out a lot of over­head. They’ve been a big pro­po­nent of the show.”

Wolf said the annual show is about hon­or­ing the her­itage of the military.

“The club put on a show about 15 years ago in Med­ina, as many of the mem­bers are from north­east Ohio,” he explained. “There are over 100 mem­bers scat­tered through­out Ohio, plus a num­ber of sup­port­ers who are not active members.”

Wolf said the mem­ber­ship and par­tic­i­pa­tion is some­thing they’d like to see grow.

“I think the econ­omy has been chal­leng­ing in get­ting peo­ple to bring their vehi­cles out for peo­ple to appre­ci­ate,” he explained. “We’re try­ing to encour­age younger peo­ple to get involved with this hobby. It’s a lot of older men – with the most inter­est in WWII era, par­tic­u­larly with Jeeps, because they’re smaller and you can restore one in a garage. Some peo­ple like the big truck aspect of it, and you can still find M-Series vehi­cles and parts. That has acces­si­bil­ity, with new orig­i­nal stock parts.”

Wolf said all branches of the ser­vice are rep­re­sented by the ven­dors and atten­dees at the show, and they are bound together by their mil­i­tary ser­vice and com­mon bond of serv­ing their country.

“It builds char­ac­ter,” Wolf said.

“Every­one who comes here absolutely loves the place,” said Event Coor­di­na­tor Tom Wol­boldt, cit­ing the camp­grounds, facil­i­ties and ameni­ties. “Our group really likes the facil­ity and it’s ide­ally sit­u­ated in the mid­dle of the state.”

“It draws its own momen­tum,” said Wolf. “When peo­ple come and have a good time, they’ll remem­ber for next year. They remem­ber they had a good time.”

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Aug 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.