05/02/2026
Many Knucklebusters members and friends have visited the Maine Military Museum on Peary Street, South Portland. It’s where we met Lee Humiston, the founder, director, curator and lifeblood of the museum. To call him a military buff is an understatement, according to Peter Kane, his best friend. As a small child, he played with the colorful ribbons on his father’s uniform. South Portland was a military town when he was coming of age, with the Liberty Shipyard cranking out crafts for the war effort. When residents began to shed their military gear after World War II, Humiston began to gather it up. “I had no idea at first that I was preserving history,” he said in 2011. “I just loved the military.”
A veteran of the U.S. Air Force (he retired, after 50 years, as a Lt. Col.), he gathered thousands of military artifacts, dating back centuries: a cannonball that was fired at Portland during the Revolutionary War, a fife from the Civil War, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph from the Vietnam War.
The museum became a reliquary, a sacred place for veterans and their families, all because of Humiston’s warm curiosity, Kane said.
Humiston gave tours to anyone who visited the museum. “He knew about everything in there,” a fellow aficionado once said.
Lee, at age 86, died from cancer on April 15, 2026.
I’m posting this because, although I may have only spoken to him a handful of times, he was a person of quiet dignity that showed with his pride in America through his love and dedication of our military history. Please consider visiting the museum sometime this summer to help revive your love of this country. Deb Desjardins, Sec., Knucklebusters Motor Club
