The Wizard of OZ Museum

About
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The Wizard of Oz museum recently opened in Cape Canaveral. The owner of the museum, Fred Trust, shares his passion for L. Frank Baum’s classic tales with the public, and this is the reason for the museum.

Fred arrived in the US from the former Soviet Union in 1980 at the age of 20, when he started to pursue his education, receiving a Graduate degree in Computer Science from Loyola College, Maryland. He has worked in the computer industry for over 30 years, but his passion was collecting Wizard of Oz memorabilia. 

Recalling the origins of his lifelong fascination with Oz, Fred explained that while attending an elementary school in his home country, the teacher read a Russian translation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz story to the class. It was presented to the children as an original Russian story written by Alexander Volkov (who after writing the translation did spin it off into his own series). No mention was ever made that the story had originated in America.

In his 20s, when he was looking for books to read to his children, he decided to locate a copy. That was when he finally learned that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was an American fairy tale and was written in 1900, and that the story he had grown up with was translated by Volkov, around the time of the MGM movie release. Fred also discovered that there was more than one book written by L. Frank Baum and other authors after him, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is just the first in the series of 40. 

He started to read them and fell in love with the stories.

With his computer skills, he built a website and let visitors learn about other Oz books, including identifying genuine original copies, appraising first and early editions of books.

His website's popularity grew and collectors from all parts of the US started to contact him for advice. The website's popularity gave him the ability to obtain the unique Wizard of Oz memorabilia that he has collected for the past 35 years. In 2008 he donated a first edition copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to the Wizard of Oz museum in Kansas, and another copy to Judy Garland museum in Grand Rapids, MN in 2010.

A Few years later in 2012  Fred's collection was featured on Public television. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySl3u7JfS_c

He moved to Florida with the goal of opening a museum and sharing his passion with the public.  Visiting the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit in 2019 gave him an idea to develop an Immersive Wizard of Oz experience and share it with the public. For the past 3 years Fred worked to make his dream a reality. He opened a museum with the Immersive Experience, and as a bonus shows Van Gogh as well.

The Museum has been featured    by various media  https://www.wizardofozflorida.com/wizard-of-oz-news-media.html and ranked 1 in Cape Canaveral and things to do ( link to wizard of oz florida.com) category in Brevard by TripAdvisor.