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.
In 1968, it took a full seven games to determine a MLB World Series champion. The seventh game, which saw the Tigers top the Cardinals, was played on October 10.
Anthony Wayne gave Fort Greene Ville and Fort Recovery their names. They were significant in both his life and mine although the level of significance is severely tilted toward Wayne. Fort Recovery is where the army led by Arthur St. Clair was nearly annihilated in 1791. It got its name when soldiers under Wayne’s command built a small fort there in 1793. Also built in 1793, Fort Greene Ville stood twenty some miles to the south and was Wayne’s home base during the Northwest Indian War. The treaty ending that war was signed there in 1795. The town that developed on the site of the abandoned fort adopted the shortened name Greenville. I grew up near the midpoint between Greenville and Fort Recovery and adopted Anthony Wayne as a hero at a very early age. I eventually figured out that much of the initial attraction was due the the cool bicorne hat he was commonly shown in, but the fact remains that I’ve known of General “Mad” Anthony Wayne nearly all of my life.
It was probably about sixty-five years ago that I was hooked by that super groovy hat and decided that the dude under it was my hero. It was only a few years later that I saw a painting of a hat-less Wayne and was shocked to learn it was the same person. That painting might even be the same one that appears on the cover of this book. It was at least similar. I recognized that there was more to a man than his hat and Wayne survived as a childhood hero. Inside Unlikely General, Mary Stockwell reveals a lot more than a high forehead. Anthony Wayne was not, as some have interpreted his nickname, insane, but he was a long way from perfect. Perhaps the fact that I’m much older now explains why I was less shocked at learning of the imperfections than I had been at my first sight of Wayne bare-headed.
The question was never if there would be another book, just when and what. The answers are “now” (actually February) and “toll gates”. In my review of Cyndie L. Gerken’s first book, Marking the Miles Along the National Road Through Ohio, I noted that the huge amount of information presented in that book was only a portion of what Gerken has collected and that we would probably someday see “a Gerken penned treatise on bridges or taverns or toll houses or something else” which shows that taking three or four guesses really improves one’s chances of being right. Nailed it!
As she did with her first book, Gerken details her subject in a chapter per county moving east to west. However, before that happens, there is an introduction filled with information about the road and toll gates in general, then chapters on vehicles, toll house architecture, and bridges. Each of these, and the county chapters too, contain numerous photos and stories that color in the detailed information and keep things from becoming boring.
Pictures of gate houses and gate keepers are to be expected, but they are not the only photo subjects presented. This might be the only book available with pictures of the world’s longest bar, grave robbers, a two-headed calf, a Spanish dime, Hopalong Cassidy, and the author’s mother riding in a goat cart. And every one of them belongs.
