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A group fighting to preserve an Indiana museum dedicated to World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle is looking for ways to
transfer the now-closed historical site into private hands.
Budget cuts and low attendance prompted the Indiana Department of Natural Resources to announce in December that it intended
to close the historic site commemorating the birthplace and career of Pyle, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist who was killed
during a Japanese attack on Le-Shima on April 18, 1945.
Friends of Ernie Pyle has been working since to find a way to transfer the property to the not-for-profit group. The state
has set an Aug. 1 deadline for the group to come up with a plan. Otherwise, the state will proceed with its plan to move the
exhibits and sell the property this fall.
Friends spokesman Phil Hess said the group is weighing all options, including making the site a federal museum and eventually
returning the museum to the state historic site system when the economy improves.
He said one option that is not acceptable is allowing the state to take the exhibits and dispose of the real estate.
"We can't allow that," he told the Tribune-Star in Terre Haute.
The group appealed the state's decision to close the site but lost. The state Department of Natural Resources says the
site with Pyle's boyhood home draws about 1,500 people a year.
David Pippen, general counsel to Gov. Mitch Daniels, and state policy director Doug Huntsinger told the group in May that
continued state funding isn't justified based on the attendance.
Hess said the Friends group has enough money to run the site for a few years and is discussing ways to operate it, which
could involve a group of volunteers or interns. The museum would be open from April 1 to mid-October.
Evelyn Hobson, the museum's curator for 20 years who helped gather many of the artifacts and exhibits, said she hoped
efforts to save the museum succeed.
"I can't believe they (the state) could do what they are doing," she said. "Ernie Pyle is a hero of all
of the veterans of World War II because he cared about them He dug a foxhole right alongside the boys."
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