Replicas of 14 historic Marine uniforms headed to MacDill

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) – Replicas of historic Marine Corps uniforms will be headed to Marine Corps Forces Central Command, or MarCent – a subcommand of MacDill-based U.S. Central Command in Tampa.

The Tampa Bay Times reports retired Gunnery Sgt. Tom Williams studies history for a nonprofit educational group he helped create to support the Corps, and in the next few months he’ll be delivering a tangible lesson to MacDill Air Force Base: replicas of Marine uniforms dating to the service’s founding at Philadelphia’s Tun Tavern on Nov. 10, 1775.

In November, MarCent signed a $47,000 purchase agreement with the United States Marine Corps Historical Co., the Virginia-based nonprofit organization run by Williams.

MacDill officials say the uniforms were bought for a Marine Corps birthday pageant.

The purchase contract was not put out to bid, MacDill purchasing officials said, because they determined the historical company is the only one able to fulfill the contract.

About 200 Marines work with MarCent at MacDill, about 6,000 in the 20 nations of the entire CentCom region. MarCent serves as a conduit between the commandant of the Marine Corps and Centcom, which controls what they do in the region.

“We purchased the uniforms for our Marine Corps birthday pageant,” said Maj. Brad Avots, a MarCent spokesman, “which shows the history from when we started to now.”

A few weeks after retiring from the corps in 1994, after 24 years as an aviation crash firefighter, Williams was drawn back by the lure of the service’s deep tradition – an attraction born of memories from his youth about a Civil War battlefield near his Maryland home.

Originally, he planned to instruct firefighters after his retirement, but he found himself “in the right place at the right time” and instead went to work full time for the United States Marine Corps Historical Co. He had helped create the nonprofit in 1990.

Using “living history” educational techniques developed by the National Park Service, the company’s mission is to “take history from behind glass and put a human face on it,” according to its website.

“We are a very small, intimately run company,” said Williams, whose staff includes a 19th century historical clothing specialist and two part-timers.

When it started, the company mainly researched Corps history and helped outfit active duty troops who donned the uniforms for ceremonies and living history demonstrations.

Now, Marine bases and commands like MarCent want their own sets of uniforms, so in 2006 the company began supplying them.

“The uniforms reinforce the human element – that this generation of Marines stands on the shoulders of those who came before us,” Williams said.