Rocky Point military museum expands after surge of donated artifacts

The Suffolk County World War II and Military History Museum outgrew its own walls because Rocky Point kept sending in more history than the volunteers had room to display. What began in a 600-square-foot space at the restored former Rocky Point train station, across from Rocky Point VFW Post 6249 on King Road, had more than doubled in size by the time the new expansion opened May 22 at 10 a.m.

The growth tells the story of who is deciding which local histories get preserved. Curator Richard Acritelli and his supporters originally asked for military memorabilia, display cases, shelves and mannequins, but donations from veterans, families and collectors quickly filled the small museum with weapons, flags and photographs gathered over generations. The collection now stretches across more than a century of wartime memory, giving the post and its volunteers the room to preserve not just objects, but the written and visual record of service connected to Rocky Point and the wider Island.

The expansion added exhibits on the end of World War II, the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, the Pacific Theater of Operations, Douglas MacArthur’s escape from Corregidor aboard PT 41 on March 11, 1942, and the June 6, 1944, landing at Omaha Beach. Acritelli said the new space also made room for displays on World War II, Korea and Vietnam, Medal of Honor and Gold Star recipients, women in U.S. military service, prisoners of war, and future exhibits on veterans from sports and Hollywood.

The museum’s buildout began in 2023, the same year it opened to the public on Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Day. Organizers had hoped to display the names of 250 local veterans on the wall of honor by opening day, underscoring the museum’s role as both archive and memorial. Joe Cognitore, commander of the local VFW post, said the project was meant to keep veterans’ combat experiences from falling by the wayside and to bring young people into contact with wartime history. Frank Lombardi described it as a way of giving back to the community.

The setting matters as much as the collection. The old Rocky Point station sits on land tied to the Long Island Rail Road’s Wading River Extension, making the museum’s growth part of the preservation of Rocky Point’s built landscape as well as its military record. In a county where volunteer organizations often carry the burden of local memory, the expansion showed that community donations can do more than fill a room: they can decide what Suffolk County remembers.