08/13/2026
In case you missed the Reporter Herald Article, we have attached it below. The Frank Ward Loveland Diorama will be open to the public one last time this Saturday August 15th from noon until 4 p.m. Don't miss this display of military history.
Reporter Herald Article:
Loveland WWII dioramas to open to public one last time
The Ward family plans to retire the decades-old collection after one final open house Saturday.
Author
By Jocelyn Rowley | [email protected] | Loveland Reporter-Herald
PUBLISHED: August 12, 2026 at 3:00 AM MDT
After more than 40 years of helping collect, haul, assemble and care for Frank Ward’s sprawling collection of military memorabilia, Mel Neal is watching that long chapter come to a close.
On Sept. 1, Ward’s family plans to retire the collection, which includes everything from military uniforms and artifacts to model planes, ships and vintage toys, along with hundreds of miniature figures arranged in painstakingly detailed scenes from World War II and other conflicts.
But before the doors close, Neal will get one more chance to do something he has always loved: show it off.
The collection will open to the public one last time Saturday at the Ward Building at 2114 N. Lincoln Ave., as a fundraiser for the Veterans Honor Monument project.
“I’ve got mixed feelings about it,” Neal, a U.S. Navy veteran, said Tuesday. “I love to show it. Whether it was one person or 200 people, to me, it was wonderful.”
Decades in the making:
For Neal, the collection’s history stretches back to the late 1970s when he and Ward stumbled into an antique toy show on a visit to California. There, they purchased some pieces from King and Country, a Hong Kong-based company known for hand-painted military miniatures.
Though Neal didn’t know it then, that fortuitous trip to the toy show launched a four-decade-long pursuit that took the pair and Neal’s wife Dee around the country and occasionally overseas in search of figures, models, artifacts and other pieces to add to the collection.
Many of the items eventually became part of the collection’s three dozen elaborate dioramas depicting everything from beach landings and tank battles to bombed-out towns, military encampments and calmer moments behind the lines.
Though some of the dioramas were purchased, others were created specifically for Ward by Andres Flores, then a college student, who spent five years building and repairing displays after a 2013 fire in the Ward Building caused extensive water damage to the collection.
The work could be extraordinarily painstaking. Neal said Flores spent more than 600 hours on one sprawling diorama, while another includes individually cut planks recreating the wooden deck of an aircraft carrier. Walking through the displays Tuesday, Neal continued pointing out details easy to overlook
“Look at the Marlboro ci******es in his helmet,” he said, holding up a figurine from a Vietnam War-era display.
One last look:
Since Ward died seven years ago, Neal has remained as the collection’s caretaker and tour guide, opening it for veterans groups and occasional public events.
Along the way, he said, showing the collection became nearly as important to him as acquiring it had been.
“Most of the time, visitors would talk about being in the military or being a veteran,” he said. “And that really meant something to me.”
The collection, however, has never operated as a traditional museum or been widely advertised. Even after decades in Loveland, people who visit for the first time frequently express surprise that something so extensive has been sitting in their hometown.
“Unless you’re in the veteran community in some way, you may not know about it,” said Ron Albers, one of the founders of the Veterans Honor Monument. “And even as many times as I’ve been here, I see something different every time. It’s just amazing.”
Once the collection is retired, most of it is expected eventually to be sold or donated, although Neal said that process could take several years. He has picked out a few personally meaningful pieces that he expects to keep as reminders of the decades he and his wife spent alongside Ward building the collection.
For everyone else who has been meaning to see it, however, the opportunity is running short.
“People say, ‘We’ll go see it someday. We’ll go see it someday,’” Albers said. “Well, someday is here.”
Saturday’s open house will run from noon to 4 p.m. at the Ward Building, 2114 N. Lincoln Ave. Admission is a donation of any amount, with proceeds benefiting the Veterans Honor Monument project (veteranshonormonument.org).
