New museum spotlights the lives of Bart and Cherry Starr

The Bart and Cherry Starr Museum opened on Friday at the Rawhide Youth Services campus in New London, Wisconsin.

“This is where they wanted to tell their story,” Alan Loux, the president and CEO of Rawhide Youth Services, told the Green Bay Press Gazette. “This is what they consider their life legacy, the work they started and were involved in until both of their deaths, and their family is still engaged in today. They were such incredible forces in our communities that people will drive a lot of miles to come here.”

A Montgomery native, Bart Starr played at Alabama before entering the NFL as the 200th pick of the 1956 draft. But from that inauspicious start, Starr went on to lead the Packers to five NFL championships and won the Most Valuable Player Award for the first two Super Bowls as the Green Bay quarterback. He was the NFL MVP for the 1966 season and entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

In 1965, Bart and Cherry Starr backed the vision of John and Jan Gillespie for the Rawhide program, giving it instant credibility in Wisconsin. But they did more than lend their names to the project — Bart Starr raffled off the Corvette he had received as the Super Bowl II MVP to make the down payment on Rawhide’s campus.

The Corvette is one of the display items at the new museum, which also features Bart Starr’s Pro Football Hall of Fame jacket, his NFL and Super Bowl championship rings and more than 300 love letters written from Bart to Cherry.

The Starrs met at Sidney Lanier High School in Montgomery and married in 1954 when Cherry Starr was attending Auburn and Bart Starr was attending Alabama.

The Starrs were married for 65 years at the time of the Pro Football Hall of Famer’s death in 2019. Cherry Starr died on Feb. 27.

“As you walk through this museum, this is almost like walking through her home and her life,” Loux said. “She was involved in this literally every week for the last three years. She was involved in every picture that is shown, every video interview, every display.”

The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Central on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and from 5 to 8 p.m. every third Friday from June through September during Rawhide’s fish-fry events.

Founded as the Rawhide Boys Ranch, Rawhide Youth Services states its mission is “to help hurting and at-risk youth discover the hope of a healthy and fulfilling life.”