$82M veterans museum opens in Ohio

Items show experience of military and families

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Step lightly between two facing mirrors at a firstof-its-kind museum honoring and celebrating the experiences of military veterans, and it takes your breath away. Behind and in front of you, as far as the eye can see, are folded flags.

You are standing midstream among the tidy triangles of past and future, the men and women who gave and will give their lives in service to the United States.

Developers of the $82 million, 53,000-square-foot National Veterans Museum and Memorial, which opened Saturday on Columbus’ downtown riverfront, seek to inspire and educate visitors with this and other inventive interactive displays.

It shows military families cleaved and reunited, it visually visits young recruits aboard military vessels, it tells love stories, it mourns wrenching losses. All this is done through state-of-the-art interactive graphics, shifting photo images, documentary-style videos, oral history interviews and other engaging approaches.

The museum is neither a war memorial nor a traditional military museum, said Amy Taylor, chief operating officer of the Columbus Downtown Development Corp., which spearheaded the effort. The goal is to show veterans’ individual lives before, during and after they serve.

“It’s a narrative journey and, while artifacts are here and we have them, they’re only here to advance the story,” Taylor said. “So it’s not like, oh, I’m here to see the original ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ flag. No, you’re here to learn a story and maybe an ice cream carton helps tells that story, or a drum helps tell that story.”

The project, conceived in 2012 and constructed over nearly three years, was the vision of Ohio native John Glenn, the late military hero, astronaut and U.S. senator who died in 2016.

John Minchillo The Associated Press A staff member looks over a display at the new National Veterans Museum and Memorial in Columbus, Ohio.