Phil Collins donates his Alamo collection to spot of its genesis

[June 27, 2014]  By Jim Forsyth
 

SAN ANTONIO Texas (Reuters) - Grammy-award winning pop star Phil Collins said on Thursday his music wealth helped him satisfy a boyhood fascination with the Alamo and he would donate his extensive collection of artifacts from the 1836 battle for a museum at the Texas shrine.

Collins, 63, said he became fascinated with the Alamo story when he was growing up in the 1950s watching the television series "Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier" starring Fess Parker. The series chronicled the frontier legend of Crockett, who eventually died as one of the defenders of the Alamo.

Collins went on to amass the largest known private collection of memorabilia from the Texas Revolution and the Battle of the Alamo.

"Some people would buy Ferraris, some people would buy houses, I bought old bits of metal and old bits of paper," the former Genesis drummer and vocalist for hits including "Against All Odds" and "Another Day in Paradise" told reporters in front of the famed structure in San Antonio, Texas. He kept the items at his home in Switzerland.
 

The collection includes rare items such as a rifle owned by Crockett, as well as one of the original Bowie knives, made famous by Alamo defender Jim Bowie, said Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, whose office runs the Alamo.

"I was like a dog with two tails as they say in England," Collins said. "The exact place where my collection should be housed is the place where it came from."

The collection will be placed on a rotating-basis display at the Alamo, where the version of the battle often taught in the U.S. schools holds that Crockett and the rest of the 160 men fighting in the battle for Texas independence were killed in combat.

The collection will begin arriving in Texas in the next few months.

(Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by David Gregorio)

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