Mower County has a new exhibit open for viewing.

The Mower County Historical Society held its grand opening Wednesday evening for the new Mower County in World War II exhibit.

“[I’m] pretty excited, this is the first grant-funded and professionally curated exhibit that we’ve had in a few years,” Executive Director of the Mower County Historical Society John Haymond said.

The historical society’s curator, Jaimie Timm, has worked on the exhibit for about a year and a half.

“Jaimie has been the driving force behind it the whole time,” Haymond said.

Timm designed the exhibit as a combination of Mower County residents who served in the war and the home front experience of people who worked in the defense industry at Hormel Foods Corp. and families from Mower County.

The new exhibit is permanent, meaning it will be on display for about 10 years. But that doesn’t mean it will always stay the same.

“I’d like to try to rotate out the stories and objects as the years go by,” Timm said. “[We want to] try to avoid having exhibits stay the same year after year after year, try to give people a reason to come back and see us.”

The exhibit does not have everything on display, partly due to items arriving later than expected and partly due to lack of space. It is also good for item preservation to get breaks.

“We do have stuff waiting in the wings,” Timm said.

After the Honor Guard held the flag raising ceremony, spectators wandered to the Headquarters Building to look at the new WWII exhibit. Although it was hard to choose, Timm said her favorite exhibit is How to V-Mail a Lipstick Kiss. During WWII, when women wanted to send a kiss to soldiers overseas, they would kiss a letter, which was turned into micro-film and sent to soldiers. At one point, things got so confusing for the mail services that an ad was put in the newspaper explaining how to send a kiss.

“That’s my favorite because they had to tell people where they could kiss the V-Mail,” Timm said.

The exhibit will stay on display and host regular hours, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday. It will be open during the fair from 1 to 8 p.m. Aug. 5 through 9, and 1 to 5 p.m. Aug. 10. Viewers can look at the display during regular hours for free, and regular fees apply to tour all 16 buildings.

“[We’re] hoping that we’ll get more people that come forward and tell us their stories and share some things,” Timm said.

Haymond and Timm encourage people to share their stories. The historical society has several items on loan for one or two years, and they want to let people know they can choose that option for their own artifacts.

“That’s a great way to do it because that enables us to tell stories that we don’t yet have,” Haymond said. “Since the historical society is dedicated to preserving and telling Mower County’s history, we need to know what the history is, and there’s more to find out all the time.”