A place of honor
New Orleans museum is becoming premier educational institution for World War II history
TNEW he inspiration for creating The National WWII Museum — originally known as The National D-Day Museum — can be traced to a comment made to a young New Orleans historian by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the mid-1960s, when memories of the fierce world struggle were still fresh.
In a conversation with rising military historian Stephen Ambrose, the former Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, praised the Higgins landing craft and its ingenuous designer, Andrew Jackson Higgins, for making Allied victory possible in World War II.
New Orleans manufacturing plants launched by the daring entrepreneur produced many thousands of the landing boats that were desperately needed to deliver service members and equipment to invasion beaches in the European and Pacific theaters. Before the war, America had no boats that could accomplish this feat.
Eisenhower's remark
resonated through time and planted the seed of an idea for a special institution-building effort, one that continues today.
People remain fascinated by the historic assault on June 6, 1944. And it is difficult to fathom that fewer than two decades ago, there was no national museum dedicated to the veterans who carried out the greatest amphibious invasion in world history.
Ambrose remembered Eisenhower's bold assertion about Higgins as he began collecting oral histories and artifacts for his book on the D-Day invasion. Ambrose was dedicated to meeting the nation's need for a lasting tribute to the military heroes and home front workers.
For years, there was no encouragement from congressional leaders that a World War II or D-Day museum would ever happen in Washington, D.C. Finally, in 1990, the idea of a D-Day museum in the Crescent City was born in a backyard conversation over drinks between myself and Ambrose; we were close friends and colleagues at the University of New Orleans and immediately decided we would do it. Long years were spent working to fulfill the vision in the home of Higgins Industries.
At the onset, we had modest ambitions for the institution's scale. Overcoming many
fundraising obstacles and other challenges, we opened The National D-Day Museum on June 6, 2000, a momentous celebration honoring thousands of World War II veterans who paraded through downtown.
They were joined by hundreds of thousands of spectators. U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Tom Brokaw, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, other state and congressional dignitaries, and nine NATO defense ministers took part. We soon discovered that the grand opening was just the beginning of a building story. Visiting World War II veterans appreciated our D-Day treatments but immediately asked why other parts of the war — their World War II, in many cases — weren't covered.
One of these individuals, U.S. Sen. Theodore Stevens, of Alaska, a veteran of the China-Burma-India campaign, offered a daunting challenge. Telling me and Ambrose that “this was the best museum in America on the war,” he said if we and museum trustees would agree to expand and tell the complete story of the World War II experience — on land, at sea, in the air and on the home front — then he would help obtain startup funding from Congress.
We agreed (with some trepidation), and in the next three years, Stevens and his close friend, World War II veteran and Medal of Honor recipient Sen. Daniel Inouye, of Hawaii, worked with Sen. Mary Landrieu and others in our Louisiana delegation to secure funding to purchase three city blocks and develop a master plan for expansion. The state of Louisiana and private donors also provided substantial funding help.
With the land purchase and master plan complete by 2003, the museum announced a capital campaign of $288 million to develop a six-acre, 300,000-square-foot campus. Sens. Stevens, Inouye and Landrieu then gained approval of a resolution from Congress in 2004 designating The National WWII Museum as America's official museum of the World War II experience.
Ambrose died in 2002, passing the leadership torch to me, the founding president.
Efforts rewarded
Since 2000, we weathered tremendous setbacks from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, funding challenges and the economic recession of 2008. I worked steadily with the national Board of Trustees and a talented, resilient staff to create extraordinary exhibits and programs. These efforts were rewarded with dramatic increases in visitation and donations.
The museum's reputation reached new levels in 2009, when it premiered the 4-D multimedia experience “Beyond All Boundaries,” produced by the Hettema Group and narrated by Hanks.
Next came the opening of the US Freedom Pavilion: The Boeing Center, in 2013, followed in 2014-15 by the permanent exhibit galleries “The Road to Berlin” and “The Road to Tokyo” housed in the Campaigns of Courage: European and Pacific Theaters pavilion. “The Arsenal of Democracy: The Herman and George R. Brown Salute to the Home Front” exhibit, which opened in 2017, devotes its galleries to the citizens who supported the war effort in countless ways.
The museum's capstone Liberation Pavilion, opening in 2021, will focus on the war's powerful legacies — one project driving an increase in our capital campaign goal to $400 million.
Led by President & CEO Stephen Watson since mid2017, The National WWII Museum is approaching completion as the premier educational institution for World War II history. We are honoring the millions who served, in distant combat zones and at home, as we explore and teach about an epic time in world history.