And the
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
him about what I do for a living,
and, you know, oh, I love history
and this and that. And he goes, oh
my son's involved with history.
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 want to 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,
for anyone that doesn't know, you
guys are located really just steps
from the state capitol.
That's right. And 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 a, 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 museum
about wars and battles, although
we do talk about that, because it's
a veterans museum.
But it's really a museum 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 a hometown, whether
it's some personal aspect,
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 everything
there is
somewhat centered on Wisconsin and
Wisconsin's role.
How do you guys pull that off?
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,
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, 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.
It's just a fantastic.
It's a fantastic introduction.
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 found in
this shoe box that was in the
basement? Like, are you getting
artifacts in that way too?
That happens about every.
Really?
Where 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, and
the actual items.
Give us a sense 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.
Speaking of the Medal of Honor,
we've got four of them on display
from World War II and Korea.
We've got a Vietnam helicopter
that was in battle, has some battle
damage.
I don't know if they showed you that
on the tail of the road. I saw that, that's amazing.
How can you miss it?
So it's some really incredible
stuff and some really credible
stories that we have on display.
Yeah, and you guys have an actual
cannon from the Civil War
period.
Right, a battle capture too.
It was a Confederate cannon that 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.
Oh, they're fantastic. They're
great, yeah.
And I was telling the crew here, and
I was tellin' you too, that when I
came in, I kinda 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 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
best direction.
And then I just let them go.
And as a leader, that's a wonderful
place to be.
And it's a 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 offsite
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.
So I'm not good at
math, but I'm sure your viewers 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 hole 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
at first of all, what best tells
your story?
You know, 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...
No, when you say oral...
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 when 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 kinds 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.
You know, some of it is people
come to us too.
And it's part of the conversation we
have is, you know, we're interested
in your collection. If you wanna
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 want to bring in 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 will 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.
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, and 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 the 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.
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 WWII, 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,
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- Leg irons,
basically. Leg irions.
Yeah. And I 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's 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 like 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, that kind of a harsh material,
I guess. Well, and it's...
These are the ones you use for the
extra harsh element.
It's an extremely unpleasant thing
to think about, but at
the same time, history is
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?
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 kinds 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 the family story,
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 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,
I just happened to arrive about the
same time a large classroom
of kids were coming through.
And I think probably those kids were
probably around 10, 11 years old.
And I saw Eric,
one of your guides there, give
them the presentation.
And I was 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
gonna kind of cross all the
generations so everybody gets a
little something out of it.
That's kind of the trick in some
ways. It's a trick.
It's a trick.
How do you do that to
engage everybody,
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.
It's more, this is what they use.
This is what the wore.
Focus in on those concrete
examples.
Think of what it would feel like to
wear a wool uniform.
Don't you think you'd be hot on the
battlefield? Things like that for
them.
High schoolers, you can do something
different with them.
You can focus on geography, you can
focus different things.
And then for other
audiences, it's just tailoring your
tour to what you wanna 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 wanna play on some of our
digital interactives, you can play
on the digital interactivs.
If you just wanna 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 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 is important.
And 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 gonna defend the
state and the nation and
serve the state in the nation,
you need to 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 Wisconsin, but old Abe
has a civil Wisconsin civil war
tie.
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'll come across are
some of the 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 wanna hit on something, two
things actually you mentioned that I
was gonna bring up later, but since
you brought it up, you
were talking about old Abe.
And for those that don't know,
maybe give them a brief little
history of
who old Abe
was.
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 company out of Eau Claire bought
an eagle and they
carried old Abe into
battle alongside the unit colors
all through the unit's 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 back,
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.
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.
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 Abes.
So it's one of great symbols of
Wisconsin.
And 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. And I wanna 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 Old Abe.
Bald eagle, so representing
the United States.
Old Abe, Abraham Lincoln.
And it's that extra,
you're not just carrying the colors,
you're 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 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 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.
It's, 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
a, 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, you know, 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 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 Fond du Lac'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 were put
over the side.
And his mother,
right before it was carried on board
ship to go be buried at Sea,
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
most, well, all of the exhibits,
especially the ones that involved
people
and the mannequins and things
that are wearing their uniforms.
I mean, 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 they put them in the gallery.
There's one in the Mexican border
with the Mexican, the.
Guy on horseback and the guy with
the motorcycle.
Yes. The guy on horse back still
visits every now and then to check
on himself.
Are you sure you haven't replaced
him with someone else?
Exactly, yeah.
I love that.
Give me a second here to look at my
notes because I was gonna go
someplace and I just.
Oh, I knew what I was gonna ask
you.
I'd love to talk a little bit about
the state as sort
of a source for all this great
military history.
We hear Camp
Randall Stadium.
We hear,
I live on the East side near
Union.
Union Corners.
Union Corneres.
And I've got the big gold statue
right there in my neighborhood.
What can 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, 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 Randill 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, is that really
a 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 I 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 a monument there.
There's the Korean War Memorial up
in Plover.
You know, there's an
admiral has a park named after him
in up in Stevens Point.
You know, Mitchell Airport 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.
Now that one spot where a
lot of the graduates from
UW take their photographs coming
into Camp Randall with the big
pillars. Yep.
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 is
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
Randle.
I was gonna say how many soldiers do
you think walked through those
arches?
Well, I'll give you an idea.
There was 81,000 Badgers
that served in the Civil War for the
United States. Wow.
And if 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 know, 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 Petrie?
So in other words, how can 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 Explained That History.
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 MacArthur 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
atop Missionary Ridge, or one of the
two flags seen atop 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.
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 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 Manitawoc 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,
or knew the same neighborhoods, knew
the city.
So you're serving with friends.
Yeah, a lot of people don't realize
that these are all volunteers back
in those.
That's correct.
That's right. 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 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 and 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 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
working or enlisting
in the Union army and end appear 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 veteran's
organization since.
And it's so, you
know, 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, you know, a hundred
years from now?
That's actually, it's funny you
bring it up that way because that's
something that I talked 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 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
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 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
and expanded veterans museum, to do
more display spaces, to make even
more programming space, 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 carry it 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
you'd like to see come your way?
One of the things that I'd like...
I'd actually like to see...
That's a tough question.
Oh, come on, you can handle this
question.
So one of the things that we'd
like, actually, we'd to see
is we'd see more from the current
conflicts.
One of the thing 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 part of
the collection that we're still
trying to...
Is there a Wisconsin piece of
history, 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.
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.
Was from Wisconsin, had moved
to New York, was there, and
then joined the army and afterwards
retired back home.
So that's probably
our closest tie.
And we talked about what you thought
was, you know, 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 the, we have the flag
from the 24th Wisconsin that Arthur
MacArthur carried up Missionary
Ridge.
So I, when I show it on tours- And
that's dating back to when again?
That's to be 1863.
So it's 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 have 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, you know, for him
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 very famous
unit. It's the second, sixth,
seventh 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 hardy hat,
dress hat.
And so in fact, the Confederates at
Gettysburg, one Confederates
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, 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 in 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?
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 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 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
come out of bed, get out of 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
anytime soon or to move into a
bigger space, anything like that?
So the current.
Our 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're gonna 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.
It did go fast.
I didn't have to look at my notes
hardly at all.
There was just, I had to look a
couple times because there was 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 was
curious, how long was that?
Do you have a time on that?
About 45 minutes.
Yeah, I think I'm good.
Let me take a quick look at my notes
here just to make sure since we're
all here.
Whatever you need, Murr, 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.
All right. 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, we hit it.
We had great.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think I'm good. I'm a good
guy.
I appreciate it.