MIDDLETOWN, Iowa--In early November, Cristin Waterbury, the director of curatorial services at National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium in Dubuque, Iowa, contacted the Garrison office at Rock Island Arsenal with an unusual request.
Waterbury was looking for some small but sturdy wood boxes or crates to be used in a project to bring a historic machine shop to the museum as an exhibit. She was seeking something that could be used to transport quantities of heavy metal tools and thought the Garrison might have wood ammunition boxes she could acquire.
The RIA Garrison referred her to one of its tenants, the Joint Munitions Command. One of JMC's 14 installations, Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, had plenty of extra boxes to donate to the museum, if someone could travel to Middletown, Iowa, to retrieve them.
Emails flew between Dubuque and Middletown regarding the size and number of available boxes, and in late November, a group of volunteers from the museum traveled south and west for about three hours to IAAAP to pick up the wood boxes.
"We usually sell our excess boxes, but sometimes that's an imposing task if we have an over-abundance. In that case, we like to donate them to non-profit organizations. We were glad to donate them to the museum," said Kelley Cooper, disposal manager at American Ordnance, the managing contractor of IAAAP.
"Everything went smoothly and we had a good exchange of information about what both of our organizations do," said Cooper.
Iowa Army Ammunition Plant produces and delivers component assembly, and medium and large caliber ammunition items for the Department of Defense using modern production methods in support of worldwide operations.
From its headquarters in Rock Island, Ill., JMC operates a nationwide network of conventional ammunition manufacturing plants and storage depots, and provides on-site ammunition experts to U.S. combat units wherever they are stationed or deployed. JMC's customers are U.S. forces of all military services, other U.S. Government agencies, and allied nations.
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