A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Kremlin

It would seem that 2022 turns the page on a curious bit of peninsula history with the passing of a couple of notable men; Robert Costa and Mikhail Gorbachev.  

Costa passed away January of this year.   A navy veteran, he married, raised a family in Cedarburg, was active in his community and Legion Post and retired from Roundy's warehouse operations in Wauwatosa after 37 years.  An avid scuba diver he maintained a home on the peninsula, retired here and dedicated himself to memorializing his fellow veterans.

Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, passed away less than a week ago.  He enjoyed a much higher profile as he rubbed elbows with the likes of Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, Lech Walesa, Václav Havel, Solzhenitsyn and is associated with glasnost and perestroika.  Gorbachev was never a democratic reformer; nevertheless, he sought to open-up his country in an effort to salvage the soviet system.  And when the system tilted into collapse he rolled with the flow and didn't blow-up the world in an attempt to hold it together.

With their passing in 2022 I am reminded that Costa and Gorbachev crossed paths and shared a common - yet obscure - bit of peninsula lore.

Costa had plans to construct a veterans museum and in 1990 he corresponded with Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with a request for a historic  military relic that might serve as the centerpiece for his museum.  Gorbachev's response was to send a working WWII era T-34 tank.  In 1991, in a ceremony at the Port of Milwaukee, Russian dignitaries, Governor Tommy Thompson and Senator Herb Kohl welcomed the tank as it was loaded onto a flatbed for shipment to Egg Harbor.  Gorbachev's name and signature was included on the title transfer documents.

The catch was that federal regulations forbid the private ownership of weapons of this sort and only a government entity could be listed on the tank's title.  (Yes, armor carries a vehicle title.)  The Egg Harbor Town Board had voted to become the official owners of the WWII piece of military equipment when another complication arose.

Upon arrival on the peninsula someone figured-out that the T-34 was configured with working coaxial guns and an operational main turret gun.  The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) was not amused.  The machine guns and breech ring were removed and secured by the Door County Sheriff's Department.

In the end, the veterans museum was not built and the Town of Egg Harbor no longer wished to be responsible for the tank.  

Military Veterans Museum Photo

As a consequence it eventually was moved to the Military Veterans Museum in Oshkosh.  

The interweb tells me that in June of this year the vintage T-34 tank found a permanent home at the Indiana Military Museum in Vincennes, IN. 

All-in-all a curious bit of peninsula history that in many respects finds closure this year.

And now you know about the time Egg Harbor was defended by serviceable armor.

And not just eggs......