Ohio has a new museum. The National Veterans Memorial and Museum opened on October 27. I visited on November 30 and confess to being drawn more by the building than anything else. Pictures I’d seen made the circular structure look both beautiful and unusual. I was also intrigued by what might be inside. I’d skimmed pieces of the Museum’s website and noted what I thought was a slogan. “A national museum where veterans, not war, come first,” turned out to be the headline of a CNN report on the museum rather than a slogan. Before I read the report and while I thought the phrase a slogan, I wondered just how much could veterans be separated from war?.
Before I went inside to answer my question, I explored a bit of the museum’s exterior. The Allied Works Architecture designed building sits on the banks of the Scioto River near downtown Columbus. Despite its nearness to the city’s tallest buildings, it is surrounded by open space nicely landscaped by OLIN. Columbus has done a nice job of keeping the river banks open and green. Directly across the river from the museum is the field where I watched fireworks in July. The Rooftop Sanctuary is accessed by a ramp curving along the side of the building and offering views of the city and river. After soaking up the views from the top, I headed back down the ramp to the main entrance.
When the subject is military veterans, avoiding war references is impossible. The museum does not push details of our various wars, but those wars are major markers in our historic timeline. The focus is on people. One of the displays encountered early on talks about taking the oath that separates a person’s civilian existence from the military one. An oath signed by Alexander Hamilton in 1778 is featured in the display on evolving oaths.
There are several interactive exhibits in the museum and here’s one I found a little troubling. The touchscreen allows a slider to be moved from 1950, when the U.S. military was present in 74 countries, to 2018, when that number is 154. The Peace Corp is currently active in 65 countries.
There are several videos as well. Some are “on demand” while others, like this one about coming home, run continuously. The first picture is a screenshot showing a celebration at the end of World War II. The second is a much more recent scene of soldiers returning from the middle east. In between are images of many other homecomings including Vietnam where a soldier tells of leaving his uniform in an airport restroom to avoid “greetings” from protesters. A friend of mine tells an identical story. As we continue to get involved in wars even less popular and more poorly justified, we have at least learned to distinguish those promoting war from those caught up in it. I am not a veteran myself and have no homecoming experience of my own. Of the two veterans closest to me, I missed out on my Dad getting home from World War II but I was there when my son got home from Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Many of the stories presented at the museum involve the struggles and accomplishments of veterans after their discharge. Some, like Tammy Duckworth and John McCain, are well known but there are plenty of unknowns who overcame just as much and made equally valuable contributions to society.
I was somewhat conflicted about this museum from the moment I first heard of it. Part of that was due to the obvious difficulty in celebrating the warrior without celebrating the war. That has been handled fairly well. Another part came from questioning the appropriateness of spending large amounts of money on the building when so many of the people it sets out to honor are in need of shelter, food, counseling, and more. The museum does promote various veteran organizations and its conference rooms and Rooftop Sanctuary will no doubt host many discussions and gatherings, but whether or not that was the best use of the money remains a valid question. I’m also not entirely comfortable with this sign on the wall of the museum’s third level. There’s not a whole lot there other than some space for contemplation, and I’m sure it’s tough to organize anything related to the military without someone bringing up the lives that have been lost, but many Americans seem to have a really tough time distinguishing between Memorial Day and Veterans Day and this probably won’t help.
I began this post by noting that it was primarily the stunning building that attracted me. I think I like it even more after seeing it in person. The building and grounds are a beautiful addition to downtown Columbus. The museum may also turn out to be a beautiful addition to the lives of veterans. Time will tell.
Old-car guys and old-road guys are hardly one and the same although there is definitely a whole bunch of overlap. With this book, Tom Cotter stakes out a position deep in that overlap. Tom is, however, much more of an old-car guy than an old-road guy so it’s not surprising that his position is closer to the car side than the road side. The story of how plans for the trip came together is telling. The idea that Tom started with was driving an old car across the United States. Over the years, the idea had been refined to involve a particular old car. He called it a dream and admitted that it was unlikely to be realized but the car he really wanted to drive across the country country was a Ford Model T. In his dream the road was secondary.
We fought a war to get this country going then gave every land owning white male above the age of twenty-one the right to vote. A little more than four score years later, we fought a war with ourselves that cleared the way for non-whites to vote. Several decades of loud, disruptive, and sometimes dangerous behavior brought the granting of that same right to non-males a half-century later, and another half century saw the voting age lowered to eighteen after a decade or so of protests and demonstrations.
Of course, putting something in a constitution does not automatically make it a practice throughout the land and I am painfully aware that resistance followed each of those changes and that efforts to make voting extremely difficult for “the other side” are ongoing today. I don’t want to ignore partisan obstructions and system flaws but neither do I want to get hung up on them. I meant my first paragraph to be a reminder that a hell of a lot of effort, property, and lives have gone into providing an opportunity to vote to a hell of a lot of people. Far too many of those opportunities go unused.
In the original title I claimed to not care how anyone votes. That was never entirely true, of course. I have my favorite candidates and issues. I’ll be disappointed in anyone who votes differently than I do but not nearly as disappointed as I’ll be in anyone who doesn’t vote at all. I’m reminded of parents working on getting their kids to clean their plates with lines like, “There are hungry children in China who would love to have your green beans.” I’m not sure what the demand for leftover beans is in Beijing these days but I’m pretty sure some folks there would like to have our access to ballots and voting booths.
