And then.
Chris Kolakowski from the Wisconsin
Veterans Museum.
Thanks for coming to In Focus.
Well, thanks for having me.
I love the story of, you know,
someone told me years ago, we all
have something in common, but nobody
ever talks long enough to kind
of figure out what it was.
And I think what brought us together
is really interesting because I'm
sitting at the airport, headed to
Cleveland a little more than a month
from this interview now, and
I ended up coming across your
dad.
That's right. Yeah.
We start talking and I'm
telling them about what I do for a
living and you know, I love history
and this and that. Oh, my son's
involved with history.
You know, so here we are.
It's funny how things work out.
My dad, I'm not at all surprised.
My dad talks to just about anybody
and he's long taught me that
everybody has a story.
They just wanna share it.
And you guys obviously made a
connection. I'm glad it worked out
that we can talk today.
Yeah, I love it. And I'll tell you,
I for anyone that doesn't know, you
guys are located just really just
steps from the state capital.
That's right. And and I've I've
walked across that area past
that building so many times,
many times it's at night.
And so it's always closed.
So but I've never
stuck my head inside.
And I finally went in.
How would you describe what the
experience is there?
The museum is right at the top
of State Street, so right across
from the State Capitol.
And when you walk in, you get
basically a tour
of the history of Wisconsin
veterans.
We start with the Civil War, and we
go right around to the present day.
And it's not necessarily a museum
about wars and battles, although
we do talk about that because it's a
veterans museum.
But it's really a museum of about
people. You get a feel for who
some of these people are in uniform,
a little bit about what they
experience, some of the service
conditions.
Like I said, in all the conflicts,
from the Civil War right up to the
present.
And we always try and find
a way for anybody that walks in a
door to find something to connect
to, at least something,
if not more than one thing,
in the museum.
Whether it's hometown, whether it's
some personal aspect, you know,
went to the same college, whatever
the case is.
And I'm really glad you came in, and
I know you had a great time with my
staff.
Yeah, I mean, I found it to be
really interesting that, you know,
everything there is, you know,
it's somewhat centered on Wisconsin
and Wisconsin's role.
How do you pull, how do you guys
pull that?
So we actually were founded by Civil
War veterans for the people of
Wisconsin. We turn 125
in 2026.
So we were founded in 1901 in the
Capitol as the GAR Memorial
Hall. Now the G.A.R.
Is the Grand Army of the Republic.
It's the veterans
organization for Civil War, Civil
War Veterans.
And our mission has since expanded
to include all Wisconsin veterans,
all services, all timeframes.
And so the stuff that we get,
Well, some of it we sometimes go out
and acquire, but the vast majority
of it, veterans and their families
will donate to us.
And so, you know, when you have a
veteran that walks in and says,
here's the uniform I wore in
Vietnam, or here's what my
father or mother did in
World War II, here's their letters
back and forth.
You know, it's
just a fantastic,
it's a fantastic.
So are you still, even to this day,
do you still get people that pop
in and say hey look what I found in
my attic, or look what I find in
this shoe box that was in the
basement, like are you getting
artifacts in that way too?
It happens about every two to three
days. Really?
We either have somebody contact us
by email, or you'd be
amazed what walks in the door
sometimes.
We just had a general's aide family
found stuff in the attic and was
like, hey, this guy was an aide to
this general in World War II.
Would you be interested in
collecting the material?
And so we
took it in.
Yeah, and I was really impressed
with some of the artifacts I saw and
the fact that they were authentic,
not replicas, you know, and the
actual items.
Give us a sense kind of what kind of
things that people will see when
they walk in.
Well, that's what I call the power
of the authentic.
The real thing, standing in front of
the real thing is different
than looking at it in a picture or
reading about it in book.
There's a power of real thing
the real place, power
of authentic.
Some of the stuff that we have,
we've got battle worn uniforms from
all the conflicts.
We have a machine gun in World War I
that the only Wisconsin Army
Medal of Honor recipient earned
the Medal of honor capturing and
brought it home as a war trophy.
We've got speaking of the Medal of
Honor, we've got four of them on
display from World War two
and Korea We've
Got a heli Vietnam helicopter that
was in battle has some battle
damage. I don't know if they show
you that
So it's It's it's some
really incredible stuff and some
really Incredible stories that we
have on display Yeah, and you guys
have an actual cannon from
the Civil War period right a
battle capture too is a confederate
cannon It was captured at Shiloh
by the 14th Wisconsin on
the second day of battle on April
7th, 1862.
And they brought it back as
a war trophy to show
off and help raise war bonds.
And for years, it was, every
July 4th, it was the salute cannon
that they'd fired down State Street
from the grounds of the Capitol.
What? Yeah, so
it's just got this incredible
story.
And it's one of the first things you
see when you first walk in.
Yeah, and that's what I love about
going through, and I
told your guys, and you've got an
incredible team of folks that they
seem to know what they're talking
about. They seem to be interesting.
Oh, they're fantastic.
They're great. Yeah.
And I was telling the crew here and
I was telling you too that when I
came in, I kind of geeked out a
little bit, nerded out little bit.
I'm not ashamed to say it because I
love history and they seem
to love it as well.
Oh yeah.
And they really just offer, I felt
like I could talk to anybody in your
facility and they would be able
to tell me something about something
that I was looking at.
I would agree with that, and
actually one of the things when I
came here in 2020, one of the
reasons I came was the staff.
It is a passionate, dedicated group.
It's a bunch of people that have
found their calling in
doing history and doing veterans
history.
And it's really,
part of my job actually is just
to direct the creativity and
direct the energy in the right, in
the best direction, and then I just
let them go. And as a leader.
That's a wonderful place to be and
it's a wonderful team and I couldn't
be prouder of what we've been doing
and what we're gonna do.
Now, how many artifacts do you guys
think you have in that?
Space down there?
So in our total collection both
there and in our off-site storage
facility on the east side of Madison
we have 27,000 objects
ranging in size from the Huey
all the way down to collar insignia
and everything in between.
That where we are in the museum
right now we have about 3%
on display just because of space
limitations. Wow.
So I'm not good at math but
I'm sure your viewers can can do the
math and figure out what we've got
there, but.
So you're saying there's like 97%
of all the other stuff you have is
in a warehouse someplace else?
Yes.
Yes. Think of an iceberg.
You just saw the tip of the iceberg
and there's this whole underneath,
under the water.
And we've got some incredible
stories there that we'd like to put
out on display. How do you know what
to keep? How do know what collect?
One of the biggest things when,
like, if you were to offer us a
collection, one of the things that
we look at is we look,
first of all, what best tells your
story.
Photographs, letters, diaries,
that's pretty obvious.
But then objects.
And sometimes if you're giving an
oral history to us, we actually have
the largest state owned oral
history, veterans oral history
collection in the country.
If you're talking- When you say oral
history does that mean like
recordings of people talking about
things or- Exactly, sitting down and
doing an interview where I
would be asking you about your
military service.
And if there are things that you
mentioned or you hold up and say,
you know, oh, I brought this back
from wherever I served.
We want that as well
because that helps document your
story.
So now, will you go out and seek
people to tell those kinds of
stories, or you guys go out in
the community across the state to
find those kind of people?
Guys and gals
go across the state.
We partner with some of the local
historical societies around the
state as well. We partner on PBS on
some things. That's us.
So you guys are great to work with.
Some of it is people
come to us, too.
And it's part of the conversation we
have is, we're interested
in your collection. If you want to
talk to do an oral history, it's
your choice, here you go.
We also look at things like
condition.
You know, is it, we don't wanna
bring in bugs, we don't wanna bring
something that's moldy, you know,
that sort of thing, condition,
preservation.
And then one of the other things we
look at is, do we
have it? You know everybody in World
War II came home with what's called
the Eisenhower jacket, which was the
dress, you know the dress one that
was cut off at the, you now at
the bottom.
It's a real sleek, sharp looking
thing.
There were 330,000 Wisconsinites
that served in World War II.
If every single one of them donated
their Ike jacket to us, we wouldn't
have space for anything else.
So there's a little bit of picking
and choosing about that of some
of the more, I hate to say, usual
suspects.
We may, it's like, okay,
we'll make exceptions in cases,
but by and large, you know,
that's another factor that we
consider.
And I'm gonna break this into two
pieces here. So for you, as someone
who's around this a lot, what do you
feel like is the most impressive
piece of the collection that's on
display at the actual museum itself
right now?
I would say one
of the most impressive things, and
when I do tours, one of things that
people react to are the
Medals of Honor, because most people
have never seen the Medal of Honor
up close and personal.
And we have four of them. We have
five in the collection.
We have four on display at any given
time, and we rotate them.
And when they see the medal,
they see stories, you can
just see how it clicks.
Because people know the Medal Of
Honor, but they may not really.
They may not have ever really been
exposed to it.
Can you give us a sense of how
unique it is for someone to re-
So think about the
Medal of Honor was created in 1862,
retroactive to 1861.
So it's been around for about 165
years.
Think of the many, many millions
that have served in
the armed forces.
Two millions in the Civil War, four
million in World War I, 16 million
in world War II.
And that's just the major world
wars in the civil war.
Then you add all the thousands in
Vietnam and up to the, there's.
Over a million on active and reserve
duty today, just alone.
Of all those millions of millions of
people, less than
4,000 have earned the Medal of
Honor. Wow.
And it's very close to 4,008, it's
about 38, 3,900.
So that's how rare it is.
And so for us to have even five
in our collection is pretty
significant.
I was blown away by the fact that
two of the ones you have are a
father-son combination.
That's right.
From Wisconsin?
Arthur and Douglas MacArthur are
from Wisconsin.
And Arthur was earned his in the
Civil War at the Battle of
Missionary Ridge in November of 1863
as an officer in a Milwaukee
regiment, the 24th Wisconsin.
And then Douglas, who was appointed
to West Point from Wisconsin,
later earned his for the defense of
the Philippines in World War II.
They're the first father-son Medal
of Honor combination in our
country's history, and they both
have Wisconsin roots.
Yeah, I remember seeing their
photographs as you come in
pretty close to the big battle
cannon. You got it, yep.
Going back to talking about some of
the artifacts, one
of the artifact that really caught
my attention was an
actual chain
and whip or
leg, I'm not sure what you
would call it, but it was from the
slavery period.
Yeah.
And I was told that
a soldier had brought that back from
the battlefield.
What's the story on that artifact?
So in 1863, during
the Vicksburg campaign, the campaign
to open the Mississippi River,
so there were several Wisconsin
units that were involved and when
they crossed the Mississippi river
into the state of Mississippi, for a
lot of these Badgers, it was the
first time that they were really up
close and personal with the horrific
institution of slavery.
And some of these guys were, if you
read their letters, which we have in
our collection, they were absolutely
horrified by what they saw
and understandably so.
And so some of these guys
collected these things and brought
them home, just
so that people would
see.
It made that much of an impact.
And what, I can't remember if the
label told it, but at least some
of the things on display,
but also in our collection, are from
Jefferson Davis' plantation, which
was overrun by Union troops.
So here you are, the president of
the Confederacy's plantation,
and you are taking not
only war trophies, but you're taking
examples, hey, this is what we're
fighting against.
This is what we're fighting for, is
to end this.
And so bring it home, it's a
powerful, and then having them out
there and being in front of them,
it's just a powerful thing.
Yeah, I was surprised too, like you
think of a whip, you
think it's gonna have some kind of a
leather or kind
of material attached to it, but that
particular one that you have on
display is, looks like
a piece of metal or
some sort of a metal, I guess.
Yeah, it had a metal and cloth
in it.
We have an all leather one in our
collection. And it is
And I say that to say that I didn't
know that they made those out
of, you know, that kind of a harsh
material, I guess.
Well, and it's.
It's one of the ones you use for the
extra harsh element.
It's an extremely unpleasant thing
to think about, but at
the same time, you know, history's
not all sunshine and roses for sure.
And you have to remember that piece.
Yeah, and I do find when people come
through, does it become
an emotional experience as they're
going through all these?
Periods of war?
It can be, it can be.
It depends on the visitor.
One of the ones that I will find
that's very interesting is when you
have families come through.
And you can tell there's several
generations.
And I'll use an example that I've
witnessed myself is where you have
grandpa stand in front of our map of
Vietnam with his grandchildren and
say, this is where I was,
and point toward the soldier we have
on display and say that's what I
looked like.
And I flew in one of those and point
to the Huey directly above.
So those kind of connections are
really incredible. Some of the
stories that people can respond to,
like we've got stories of
people that are killed and
then, you know, the family
story.
You know, that's still resonant.
And I actually have staff members
when I talk about the death of
somebody in their 20s that have
children in their twenties and can
get emotional, you now,
when we're talking about that or
when they're hearing it on
a tour.
So it just depends on what
grabs people.
But again, that's the connection
we're looking for.
It may be emotional, it may be
intellectual, whatever.
But the point is to get these
stories and get people connected and
realize, hey, these were
people just like us.
They did incredible things in the
service of our state and nation.
And it helps bridge that gap,
the civil-military divide, as it's
called.
Yeah. And when I came through,
um, I just happened to
arrive about the same time, uh, a
large classroom of kids were
coming through. And I think probably
were those kids were probably around
10, 11 years old.
Um, and I, and I saw Eric,
uh you know, one of
your guides there, you know, give
them the presentation.
And, and, and I was, uh pretty,
pretty cool to see these young
folks learn about this.
So who's the typical person that
kind of comes through and how do you
build an experience that's going to
kind of cross all the generations so
everybody gets a little something
out of it. That's kind of the trick.
It's a trick.
It's, you know, how do you
do that to engage everybody,
you know, senior citizens all the
way down to children?
And that's the trick.
I call it the trick.
One out of every three of our
visitors are school children.
And I'm really, really proud of that
because that's the next generation.
What we do is diminished if
the next generation doesn't
understand or appreciate what
this history is.
And so for some of the younger kids,
it's not necessarily,
you know, it's more, this is what
they use, this is they wore,
you know focus in on those concrete
examples, those concrete, you think
of what it would feel like to wear a
wool uniform, don't you think you'd
be hot on the battlefield, you know
things like that for them.
You know, high schoolers, you can do
something different with them.
You know you can focus on geography,
you can focused on different things.
And then for the, for
other audiences, it's just tailoring
your tour to what you want to do for
the audiences.
And that's why we present it the way
we present.
Even if you walk through the
galleries unguided, there's
enough there.
If you want some of our digital
interactives, you can play on the
digital interactivs.
If you just want to walk and look
and see what catches your eye, you
can do that too.
That's also why we put the maps out
there, so people see kind of where's
Vietnam, where's Korea,
where's the Pacific
theater in World War II.
And so it's kind of, we would try
and create kind of a choose your own
adventure,
and let you kind
of guide yourself from there.
And why do you think it's important
for these young folks to learn about
all this? And why is it important
for them to learn specifically about
Wisconsin's role in
previous conflicts?
I think it's important for two
reasons, to educate and to inspire.
To educate, people need to
understand that the shoulders
that we stand on as Wisconsinites
and as Americans are
the generations that have gone
before us.
And when you think about what
Wisconsinites have stood for,
have raised their right hand and
said we're going to defend the
state and the nation and
serve the state and the nationwide,
you need to know what that
is and what that has entailed.
The other thing I would point out is
the state symbols that we look at
every day that are callbacks to
Wisconsin veterans, our state flag,
our state song on Wisconsin.
Both callbacks to Wisconsin, but old
Abe has a civil Wisconsin
civil war tie.
You know, so there are things like
this that we see every single day
that most people don't realize comes
right out of the service of
Wisconsin veterans.
So that's the education piece,
is get that appreciation.
What has made us who we are
and what we are
and where we're going and the
shoulders we stand on.
The other piece is inspiration
because some of the most incredible
stories that you will come across
are some of stories we have in the
museum.
I tell people, if you wanna read
some absolutely incredible stuff,
read Medal of Honor citations and
be very thankful that people like
that have existed and
have been capable of doing that.
That's something that's educational,
but it's also very inspiring.
When you realize some of what has
gone before, and, hey, we've gone
through this, or, hey the frozen
show sin, they survived
that horrible winter,
we can do the same thing.
Whatever's going on in front of us,
it gives us perspective.
And so that's the inspiration piece.
And I think that's both of those
you can find at the Veterans Museum
for sure.
And I want to hit on two things,
actually, you mentioned that I was
going to bring up later, but since
you brought it up.
You're talking about old Abe,
and for those that don't know,
maybe give them a brief little
history of
who oped.
Old Abe represents and what he
represents. Old Abe, the war eagle.
When most people think of Wisconsin
in the Civil War, they tend to think
of the Iron Brigade in the East, but
Old Abe was the mascot of the Eighth
Wisconsin, which served in the
Western Theater, including in the
Vicksburg campaign we were talking
about earlier.
And on the way to Camp Randall when
the unit was forming, a
group, a company out of Eau Claire
bought an eagle and
they carried Old Abe into
battle alongside the unit colors
all through the unit service.
Old Abe, at the end of the war, came
back. He had a price on his head.
The Confederates had given
a bounty if somebody can kill what
they called the Yankee Buzzard.
He survived unscathed, came out,
lived out his days in the basement
of the Capitol.
He died of smoke inhalation in the
first Capitol fire.
His body was burned up in the second
Capitol fire, but we still have some
original feathers from him.
We do have a replica, full-scale
replica, in the museum.
You can't miss it.
It's one of the first things. It is
one of first things
Um, old Abe, there's a statue of old
Abe in the state assembly
chamber that's right
above the speaker's dais.
And so old Abe watches over
the state legislature.
Um, you'll see old Abe pop up in a
few other places. The mascot, one of
the high school mascots up in Eau
Claire is the old Abe's.
Um, so it's one of great symbols
of Wisconsin, and
it's still, he still goes into
battle because of the connection to
the 101st airborne.
I don't know if they explain that to
you or not.
They did. They did and I'm
I want to make sure people get this,
too, and correct me if I'm wrong,
but was Old Abe
flown in battle as a symbol
of here we come kind of thing,
or what did it represent when
he was... So all day.
The bald eagle, so representing
the United States, old
Abe, Abraham Lincoln, and
it's that extra, you're
not just carrying the colors, you
are carrying the national mascot,
which is also the unit mascot.
And the 8th Wisconsin was officially
known as the Eagle Regiment for
that reason.
And so it creates that, you know,
that esprit de corps, that sense of
teamwork, that sense a pride in the
unit that, hey, we're the only ones
carrying an eagle into battle
in the entire Union
Army. We're the only regiment that
does this.
And it's, you know, it just adds
something extra. It adds that extra
oomph that sometimes carried them on
to victory.
It's pretty sad that he survives
all that war and all those
things and then loses
his life in a fire.
At the Capitol.
Yep, yeah, in
some ways it's very ironic.
You survive all that and then this
is what happens.
Now do you get a sense that there's
any wow
type of moment or
exhibit at the museum that people
tend to drop their mouth
at every time they see it or they
make some stop and maybe
pay attention to that exhibit a
little bit longer than some of the
other ones? Anything stand out to
you on that?
I think one of the things that
stands out to people...
That's kind of a tough one, because
again, it's different for different
people. But I will say there are two
or three that people stand around
and look at.
One of the ones is the Vietnam
exhibit. But one of the other ones,
and one of the ones that I notice
people linger at quite a bit,
is Mark Nieto and the USS Cole.
During the USS Coal attack, October
12th, 2012,
sailors were killed during the
terrorist attack at Aden, Yemen.
One of them was von Delac's Mark
Nietoe.
And they come back, he's
cremated. Half of his ashes are
spread in the family cemetery in
Fond du Lac, the other half are
buried at sea.
And one of the things that we have
on display is one of Nieto's
uniforms. We have some other things
from that day and that event.
But we also have the box that
carried his ashes that was put
over the side.
And his mother,
right before it was carried on board
ship to go be buried at see,
she kissed the tag.
And the lipstick is still there.
And it's the mom's final kiss
goodbye to her son.
And that really,
that's the reaction we get from a
lot of people. And that's one of
those, we were talking earlier about
impacting families.
That's one those where I've
actually, I've seen mothers get
very emotional because
they can relate.
I mean, it's an easy thing to relate
to if you're a parent.
And the final kiss good bye to your
child that has died
before his time.
Yeah, I was really impressed by
the realism of
all of the exhibits,
especially the ones that involved
people and
the mannequins and things that are
wearing the uniforms.
There's one of a soldier on
his knee, it's to the left
when you walk in to the
main exhibit hall there.
And it literally startled
me because it looks like a
real person.
A lot of those actually are real
people.
When the museum was done,
there's a company on the East Coast
called Studio Ice, and they can do
castings of your face.
And so we had people get their face
molded, just some staff members,
volunteers, some other prominent
veterans that helped construct
that museum in 1993,
and put them in the gallery.
There's one in the Mexican border
with the... So the.
The guy on
horseback still visits every now and
then to check on himself.
Make sure you have him.
And placed him with someone else.
Exactly, yeah, yeah.
I love that.
Give me a second here to look at my
notes because I was gonna go
someplace and I just.
Hitting on some, because, oh, I knew
what I was going to, I was going to
ask you, um,
I'd love to talk a little bit about,
uh, the state as sort
of a source for all this great
military history.
You know, we hear, you
know, Camp Randall stadium,
we hear a,
you, know, I live on the East side
near a union
union, union corners.
Yep. And I've got the big, you know,
gold statue right there in my
neighborhood.
Um, well, Why don't you tell us
about...
Some of the remnants of that history
that's still amongst us and like
when I think Camp Randall, I don't
know if people realize that that was
a place where Wisconsin soldiers
went to get trained and prepared to
go to bat.
Absolutely, if you look around not
just Madison, but around the state,
you will find traces of
the state's military history.
Camp Randall being one of the best
examples. Half of Wisconsinites
that went off to war,
mustered in Madison and then went
off to the front.
The other half were in Milwaukee.
And actually during the Spanish
American War, the state fairgrounds,
you know, everybody goes to the
state Fair. Everybody loves the
state fare. That was the Camp
Randall of the war with Spain in
1898. And there's a little plaque
on the exhibition hall
that commemorates that
service.
But Camp Randal, the parade field at
Camp Randel during the Civil War is
today the gridiron.
It's actually the playing field in
the stadium.
And for those who are familiar
with military installations, the
paradefield is really kind of the
beating heart of life at
the installation.
And so for they
to be on the same spot.
Every time I go to that stadium, it
just, it hits me on a little extra
level.
You know, you talk about street
names and location names, Union
Corners, Fairchild
Street, Civil War veteran,
later became governor.
You know you start going down the
list and you see a lot of these
names.
The Molthouse Bar, I understand,
is that really
an old post
office I thought I heard someone
say?
It was one of the old post offices,
you know, and then you go to
other places around the state,
Argonne, the town of Argon in
northern Wisconsin,
named after the World War One
battle.
Dorchester has a monument to the
famous four chaplains that die at
sea from Dorchester.
None of them were directly connected
to Wisconsin, although there were
badgers that died in the shipwreck,
but because it was the SS Dorchester
that sank,
they raised monument there.
There's a Korean War Memorial up in
Plover. You know, there's
an admiral has a park named after
him in up in
Stevens Point.
Mitchell Airport in,
in Milwaukee.
General Mitchell, right? General
Mitchell. Billy Mitchell.
You know, and you start going down
the list and then you look at the
national cemeteries and the state
veterans cemetries, you know, that
are around the state.
Bob Euker is now because he was an
army vet is now buried in the
national cemetery right by the
stadium. You know.
So if you look, you can
find reminders and
the presence of Wisconsin veterans
in the very physical fabric
of what this state is.
That one's
spot where a lot of
the graduates from
UW take their photographs coming
into Camp Randall with the big
pillars.
Is that remnants
of the original Camp Randle?
That's part of the original Camp
Randall. As a matter of fact, that
arch that people walk through
to get to and from the stadium, it
was very famous, was raised
by the GAR and
Civil War veterans in 1911
to commemorate.
And most people don't stop and look
at it, but the statues are really,
you know, really well done.
And then the plaques list all of the
units that came through Camp
Randal.
How many soldiers do you
think walk through those arches?
I'll give you an idea, there was
81,000 badgers that served in
the Civil War for the United States.
Wow.
And about half of them came through
Camp Randall, so that's about 40,000
people.
And if you think about that
society at the time, it wasn't as
mobile as we are.
You and I have both talked about how
we moved around for our career, and
there are a lot of people that move
around or travel.
For a lot these people,
they'd never really been out of the
county.
Until they go to the big city of
Madison or the big City of
Milwaukee, and then from there
to the front lines.
And so for a lot of these veterans,
and I would argue even for later
generations, this is
one of the defining things in
their life.
There's a song that comes after
World War I that is written called,
how can we keep him down on the farm
after he's seen Petri?
So in other words, how can these all
these returning servicemen
Are they really gonna stay in their
small town when they've seen
Paris, when they're seen other parts
of the world?
You know, and that's
another human piece of it
that people don't necessarily think
about.
And earlier you mentioned On
Wisconsin as a battle
cry.
I had no idea that that song
comes from Wisconsin
military. Explain that history.
So we talked about Arthur and
Douglas MacArthur.
This is actually from Arthur
MacArthur's Medal of Honor action.
They're going up the Missionary
Ridge outside of Chattanooga,
Tennessee, and it's
an 800 foot that slope,
45 degrees or better.
And as they're going, the color
bearer of the 24th Wisconsin, who's
in his 40s, gets tired.
Understandably so.
But the problem is, in the Civil
War, you're trained that wherever
the flag is, you are.
So if the flag stops, you stop.
So he stops for a second to catch
his breath.
The unit stops under fire.
Arthur McArthur is 18 years old.
He's full of all that teenage
energy, right?
So he comes over and grabs the flag
and yells, I'll take
it, and turns to the unit and
yells on Wisconsin,
leads him up the hill.
One of the first two flags to break
a top missionary ridge or one of the
two flags seen a top missionary
ridge is the 24th Wisconsin.
And he gets the Medal of Honor for
that leadership under fire, it's
that story.
That inspires the state song
and the fight song on
Wisconsin. So now does that mean
that whole, that regimen, they were
all Wisconsinites?
Yep, they all came from Milwaukee.
Every, most Civil War units
were recruited from a specific,
either a specific region or
a specific city,
in the case of Milwaukee.
You could get everybody from
Milwaukee County because it's a big
enough city.
You get some units, like one of my
ancestral units, the 21st Wisconsin
is from the counties around
Manitowoc between Manitouac and Lake
Winnebago.
And so that's where that comes from.
You get Madison units as
well, but they all are very,
and a lot of these guys grew
up together or served in the same,
you know, or knew the same
neighborhoods, knew the city.
So you're serving with friends.
Yeah, a lot of people don't realize
that these...
Volunteers back in those days,
right? That's correct, that's
correct. The draft, most of the
250 year history of the United
States military from 1775 to
the present,
only about a third of that has
been the draft.
The rest of the time it's been
volunteer.
And you know, we think of the draft
because they had the peacetime draft
all the way through Vietnam.
That is the exception
rather than the rule.
The volunteer military we've had
since 1973 is very much the
rule And so you get these
people that make a conscious
decision to raise the right
hand and go.
Yeah, and one of the things I
learned from listening to
your team is some
of these regimens were built on
community and people were pulled
from the same communities and
part of that community includes a
lot of diversity.
In terms of people of color.
That's right.
And that's something that we try
and showcase a lot and try and
point out where we can.
There are entire companies recruited
out of the Indian reservations, the
native reservations.
It's really interesting how they, no
written language, but how you
transliterate that in the records.
There's a company of United States
color troops that comes out of
Milwaukee to go serve in the
United and a couple a
couple of black
USCT Wisconsinites are at
Appomattox, the surrender of
Lee's Army in 1865.
And there's some that
are liberated as slaves and
end up here in Wisconsin after,
you know, working or
enlisting in the Union Army and end
here as Wisconsinites and
are treated at
no different than any other Civil
War veteran. And that's something
that should be mentioned, is the GAR
never segregated in
any way?
They actually had a few women
members as well.
And the same was true of a veterans
organization since.
And so you
sometimes hear veterans say,
I see no color but green or blue or
whatever the service is.
And you see that also in some of
these veterans communities too.
It's a really incredible story.
What do you see, Chris,
future-wise, in terms of how
this museum continues to be curated
and how
it grows and what's
it gonna look like moving forward,
especially 100 years from now?
That's actually, it's funny you
bring it up that way because that's
something that I talk to the team
about, particularly when we collect.
Is I say, when we collected,
what do we want people 160 years
from now to know about this
generation? What are we gonna need
to tell that story?
And we have an idea of that because
the Civil War 160 years ago.
What do we have and what did we wish
we had?
So there's that. The other thing is
when we take...
Like if you were to donate, if
you're a veteran and you donated me
your uniforms, we take on a legal
and ethical obligation to
make sure that a hundred years from
now, it's in good shape and
can be studied, your story is
preserved and can be shared for
future generations.
And that's something we take very,
very seriously.
In terms of where we're going, we
are actually have been working with
the state legislature on and they
in the latest budget, they gave us
some money to do some engineering
and planning.
To look at the next generation of
the Veterans Museum, an expanded
Veterans Museum to do more display
spaces, to make even more
programming space, you know, to
really take us
to the next level.
And to the point I just made,
when we looked at what we needed and
we started looking at what's gonna
be required, I said, we're not
thinking 10 years, we're thinking
30, I want you to think 50 years and
beyond. This is a once in a
generation project.
And so let's think about it in those
terms and give those
future generations,
set them up for success to be able
to carry it,
to stand on our shoulders and
be able to carry forward and
continue the important mission that
we do.
And you talked about artifacts and
things you wish you might
have.
Is there something out there that
you feel like you'd love to get in
that collection over there that
would you like to see come your way?
One of the things that I'd like to
see is, I'd actually
like to, that's
a tough question.
Oh, come on, you can handle this
question.
So one of the thing that we'd
like, actually we'd to see,
is we'd see more from the current
conflicts.
One of things that you'll find is
that from desert storm
forward,
they have trouble thinking of
themselves as historic.
Yeah, because it's all, we're all
kind of living it, right?
We're still living it.
And it's still in the fairly recent
past.
But Desert Storm is over 30 years
ago.
9-11 is gonna be 25 in
2026.
So getting those stories now
from that generation of veterans
is something that we'd really like
to, we'd like to
see more of.
That's a piece of the,
a part of the collection
that we're still trying to.
Is there a Wisconsin piece of
military history that's connected to
9-11 that you can think of off the
top of your head?
We had several Badgers that were in
the Pentagon on that day, and we
have their oral histories.
That's probably the most prominent
thing that I can think of off the
top of my head.
And we did actually have, we
have at least, we have oral
histories from several Wisconsin
veterans that joined because of
9-11, and they talk
about it. You know, I saw the towers
come down, and it motivated me to
join up and serve my
country.
And we actually have somebody who
joined the Army who survived the
trade center.
And was from Wisconsin,
had moved to New York, was there,
and then joined the Army and
afterwards retired back home.
So, you know, that's probably
our closest tie.
And we talked about what you thought
was one of the more impressive
kind of artifacts on
site. Let's go to that warehouse.
You've got so much stuff in there.
What is the most impressive thing
you think you feel like you have in
that space?
So I'll give you two things.
Number one is that we have the flag
from the 24th Wisconsin that
Arthur MacArthur carried up
Missionary Ridge.
So when I show it on tour, it's
1863,
so it's a 160-year-old silk flag.
And so I pull it out and say, this
is the origin item.
And it's incredible, the reaction
we get.
One of the other things that we had
is, you know, the Iron Brigade
was known as the black hats because
of the tall black hats that they
wore. The only battle
worn black hat still
in existence is
in our collection.
Wow. And it was carried at
Gettysburg by the color bearer of
the second Wisconsin who was shot
five times and
actually was shot six times because
the six bullet went through the brow
of the cap but was too high
for him to strike
his head.
And give us a quick lesson on the
Iron Brigade for those who don't
know that.
So the Iron Brigade is a very famous
unit. It's the 2nd, 6th, 7th
Wisconsin, 19th Indiana, and 24th
Michigan.
And they were known, again, we were
talking about signatures earlier
with the Eagle Regiment.
They were known as the Black Hat
Brigade, and later the Iron brigade
because of their tenacity in battle.
But their signature was wearing the
tall, it's called a hardee hat,
dress hat.
And so, in fact, the Confederates at
Gettysburg, one Confederate is
recorded as saying to the other,
There's those damn black hatters
again This ain't no militia
we're fighting. This is the Army of
the Potomac.
So everybody on both sides knew who
they were. They were very famous.
And even today, a lot of people,
when they think of Wisconsin and the
Civil War, that's the first thing
they think.
So, and as
far as the name itself, they became
the Iron Brigade because of their
toughness.
Or how did they get that kind of?
Because of the toughness in battle.
Actually, it was the Battle of South
Mountain in 1862 as
they're climbing the
mountain under Confederate fire and
going up very steep.
One of the Union generals looks at
it and says, those must be men of
iron to do that.
Wow.
And that's, the name stuck.
We're gonna wrap you up, because I
know you've been there a little bit
talking to us.
I'd love to hear just, why are you
so passionate about all this?
To be honest,
reasons personal and professional,
both.
The professional piece, I think
we've already talked about some, the
power of a great story, the power
being able to share these stories.
I'm very passionate about teaching
and educating and getting
people excited, as excited as
I am, and to understand the
importance of this stuff.
But this is also personal.
My ancestors have been
in Wisconsin since 1845.
I have Wisconsin ancestors,
Wisconsin veteran ancestors in my
family tree, all services
from the Civil War
all the way up through the Cold War.
And so for
me, it's a way to honor that
and honor my family and
honor their service as well.
And so those two things,
those two thing make it very easy to
get out of bed every day.
And if you had one
superpower to kind of make something
happen that you'd like to see happen
over in your space, what would that
be?
And are you any plans to move
any time soon or to move into a
bigger space, anything like that?
So the current plan is we're working
to exercise the option to buy
the building where we are.
And once that's done, where the
engineering is, the concept is
we are going to tear
down the existing building and build
new and build a new purpose built
facility to the requirements that
we talked about.
If I could wave a magic wand,
it would be fully resourced tomorrow
and we'd be able to get underway.
But we're still working
through the engineering and we're
working on raising the funds.
It's gonna be a public-private
partnership with our foundation and
with the state.
As I tell people, we're on the same
path as the History Center, which is
under construction across the street
from us.
We're just a few years behind.
But it's gonna exciting.
It's gonna be very exciting.
Well, Chris, I appreciate you
stopping in and I appreciate the
team that you guys have over there.
You're doing some incredible work.
Thank you very much. Thanks for
having me. I'm an old man,
but I went in there and I learned
things that I
didn't know before and I'm gonna
have to come back and spend some
more time. Don't be a stranger.
We appreciate you stoppin' in.
It went fast, however.
I did go fast, I didn't have to look
at my notes hardly at all.
I had to look a couple times because
there were just some things that I
wanted to make sure I got in.
If I had a guess, I would think that
was about 45, 40,
but I don't know.
Murr, do you need any cutaways?
Are there any questions you need to
re-ask?
I think I'm good as far, but I just,
I was curious, how long was that?
Do you have a time on that?
Roughly?
Well, 45 minutes.
Right on the mark. Yeah, I think
good.
Let me take one quick of my notes
here, just to make sure, since we're
all here, and you, and whatever.
Whatever you need.
Whatever you need. I appreciate it.
And you offered, Willie.
I think I got everything in there.
There's one question I did, that's
one I didn't ask, but it's okay.
I think I'm good, man.
I think, is there anything that you
wanted to get in there that we
missed that? I think we covered it.
I think we covered it.
I think, I think that we hit it, we
hit great.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think I'm good. I'm a good
guy.
I appreciate it.