Mid Atlantic Air Museum’s WWII Weekend Canceled

As you may have already seen, the Mid Atlantic Air Museum (MAAM) has had to cancel their 2020 WWII Weekend, one of the nation’s truly great events celebrating the men and women who helped preserve our freedoms during the Second World War. We have covered this marvelous event numerous times in the past, and had been looking forwards to celebrating their 30th anniversary edition this past weekend. But, as we all know, the global pandemic has caused immense disruptions to every aspect of our normal way of life, and will do so for the foreseeable future for obvious reasons. And while MAAM had hoped to reschedule the show for the July 31-August 2nd time period, this too has now slipped. Balance will return though, of that we can be sure; it just requires a little patience on all our parts.

Here now is the MAAM’s press release…

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The time has come to make an informed-as-possible decision on holding WWII Weekend on the alternative dates of July 31, Aug. 1, & Aug. 2.

Thus far Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has made it extremely difficult to make any plans to move forward with the event from where we are now. Most of eastern Pennsylvania has finally moved into the ‘yellow phase”, which prohibits large gatherings of more than 25 people. The ‘green phase”, will prohibit large gatherings of more than 250 people. Governor Wolf admitted on Friday, June 5th, that he does not yet know what comes after the “green phase” as no plans have yet to be formulated. It is extremely likely that the large gathering prohibition will continue through this year.

To quote Jack Pelton, Experimental Aircraft Association President, when he announced cancellation of Oshkosh’s AirVenture 2020, the largest aviation event in the country, “We need a sure thing – we cannot afford to gamble!” These are our sentiments exactly. Therefore we cannot, in good faith, move forward with the planning and additional financial investment necessary for WWII event planning without knowing we have a “sure thing”. Therefore we have made the difficult decision to cancel WWII Weekend for 2020.

After 40 years of Museum operations, I never envisioned that we would find ourselves in a position where we were not in control of our destiny as an organization, but then again, I never envisioned anything like the COVID-19 pandemic covering the world in this modern age! I doubt any of us did!

Hopefully 2021 will look better for all of us, and we look forward whole-heartedly to WWII Weekend 2021. Brenda and I thank you for your understanding and for your continued interest and dedication to the Museum and WWII Weekend.

We have set up a “Go Fund Me” campaign to helping replace the lost funding that the cancellation of WWII Weekend presents to us. Please take a moment to look at our “Go Fund Me’ site on our Facebook page, Instagram page and our Museum home page and be sure to share with your friends. We are optimistic about its success and hope that you will be too.

Russ

Russell A. Strine
President
Mid Atlantic Air Museum