Gene Schott

Thornton W. Burgess Society, Collector, Protector, Preserver

I was born in Reading, Pennsylvania. After teaching high school history for 10 years and working at a museum there, my wife and I moved to Charleston, West Virginia, for four years while I worked at the Sunrise Museum. We liked the town, but I was looking around for a museum that was more interested in military history because that was primarily my area of interest. When a job at Heritage Plantation was advertised through the American Association of Museums bulletin, I learned that Heritage had a collection of military miniatures which the founder, J.K. Lilly III, had acquired from his father’s estate.