RECONSTRUCTED DIORAMA OF BATTLE OF PALMETTO RANCH (submitted to the Tribune by Retired Maj. Ted Aanenson)

   Jeff Hunt is going to get away with it.
   It looks like the director of the Texas Military Forces Museum isn’t going to be held accountable for his trashing of a piece of art from Arizona – a Civil War diorama put together over three years by students from Gilbert’s Highland High School under the direction of history teacher Glen Frakes.
   As Tribune writer Hayley Ringle first reported Tuesday night, a different version of the diorama is back on the display at the museum located at a Texas National Guard facility in Austin. Hunt took apart the diorama last year a couple of months after it was delivered and first put on display. He claimed the piece had historical inaccuracies and was too large for a planned museum remodeling.
   In reality, Hunt’s decision to take the diorama apart was an assault on the hard work of the Highland students and the education that Frakes provided them. After enormous political pressure and media scrutiny was applied to this issue, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and the National Guard ordered the museum to restore the diorama and to let the public view it again.
   I don’t know much about the craft of diorama-making. So I have to rely on Frakes and eyewitness accounts about what Hunt accomplished. Frakes says the new version barely resembles the artwork that his students created.
   “My students built a diorama that looked like it was built by adult diorama model makers,” Frakes told the Tribune. “This looks like it was made by elementary school children. This is like something a child of 7 or 8 would do on the living room carpet.”
   One compelling fact for me is the new version uses only about 170 of the original 750 hand-assembled soldier figurines. That seems to confirm far more of the figurines were damaged or destroyed when the diorama was taken apart than Hunt has ever been willing to admit.*
   The Texas National Guard wants this issue to just go away. In interviews with Ringle, me and other media, National Guard spokesmen keep emphasizing that the agency is focused on supporting troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The implication has been we critics are wasting the National Guard’s time by fretting over a 10-foot piece of wood, plaster and pewter.
   But the tragic mishandling of the diorama, and the refusal afterward to return it to Gilbert for proper restoration, suggests the Texas National Guard isn’t willing to invest the time or money to get even the little things right. I can only hope the Texas National Guard is showing more honor and attention to the people under its command, since it cares little about the visions and dedication of good teenagers in Gilbert.
*Update:
   Glen Frakes pointed out to me Wednesday that Jeff Hunt has said in some media reports that he intends to put together a second diorama for another Civil War battle. So, to be fair to Hunt, it’s possible he held back some of the original 750 figurines for future display.