Welcome to the Wilson History and Research Center (WHRC), a tax exempt, charitable foundation serving in accordance with our Charter. Our goal? A complete collection of every piece of military headgear developed, produced and modified, by every country during the 20th Century.

This Charter has been the basis of my collection for many years, but when museums began to accept our promise to complete their exhibits with a loan of our headgear, it became clear that we would need to develop a formal institution to serve as the lender of materials. This entity would be responsible for providing material and headgear which passed the scrutiny not only of museum curators and staff, but the ever watchful and keen eyes of the many collectors who would be examining our loans and contributions. The material and headgear, along with their descriptions, would require an academic analysis which could be understood in methodology and conclusion by all levels of all interested parties. Thus was born the concept of a tax exempt foundation. So, on January 1, 2008, we launched WHRC without fanfare.

As we began to examine our needs versus our stated goal, we felt compelled to estimate how many headpieces our Charter encompassed. Only then did we realize that every country has some form of army, navy, air force, honor guard, presidential band and so on. We also found that each individual soldier has numerous uniforms for work, dress, parade and combat to name a few. And, that many uniforms change within weeks of being approved and most, if not every, uniform has a separate distinct head piece. This goes on and on to the point of becoming mind numbing. To illustrate the point on January 1, 1900 there were 57 countries on the face of the planet. On December 31, 1999 there existed 192 sovereign nations—nearly four times as many nations at the end of the century than when it began. To the uninformed such growth should signal that the 20th Century was a time of prosperity and growth where peace reigned supreme; in reality the 20th century was the most destructive, violent and costly century in history. It was virtually one hundred years of war and warfare where twenty percent of the buildings and structures on the planet were damaged or destroyed and the crème of four generations, nearly 200 million young men and innocent civilians, lost their lives. What then of the headgear that the soldiers of humanity's most violent century wore? Our estimate (and we can only estimate because in the final destruction of countries and regimes paperwork which provides the exact numbers have been lost or destroyed) is that there were 1,000,000 designed and produced head pieces during this period! But if that figure by itself doesn't surprise you consider for every designed and produced piece there were an average of 10 authorized modifications. That brings the universe of our charter to a staggering 10,000,000 separate pieces.

In all honesty, I thought it might be 10,000 or so total, but with 10,000 or so separate pieces in our care, I can now see where our new estimates will be much closer to the mark than my original thoughts. We have remaining only nine million, nine hundred and ninety thousand pieces to go! A lifetime of work awaits us. As our second year begins, we ask your help. Contact us if you have pieces to sell or donate. We can explain to you the tax advantages of donations. But most of all watch our web site, enjoy its growth and be a part of its accuracy. As pieces go on the site, give us your feedback. Are they correctly identified? If not, straighten us out. We will give you a contributing author acknowledgement. Do you have one of a kind pieces which you would like to display? If so, we would like to include them in our web site and studies. In fact, we want this web site to become a basis for research, so you may see multiple items nearly exact in similarity, but for us, the catalogue of existing pieces, no matter how similar is very important in grading quality, authenticity and placing it in history. So join us and be a part of our team.

— Robby Wilson, Founder

Please contact us if you have any questions, comments or suggestions on improving the foundation and this website.