By Mike Perry
In 2001, when you drove south on Interstate 81 and neared the High Street exit in Carlisle, farm fields filled the land. Today, as you near that exit, you see helicopters, a “fortress” with cannons and Army tanks.
The 58 acres to the north of the interstate, which once were filled with soybeans, are transformed and today filled with veterans and families, students, outdoor exhibits and the buildings that are home to the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center.
Dedicated to honoring our soldiers and their families, preserving their memories, and educating and informing the American public, the USAHEC is a national treasure in south-central Pennsylvania.
On a typical day, families, veterans and those interested in our nation’s history can be found touring the land or researching in the archival and library collections. In the evenings and on weekends, the Army Heritage Trail is filled with families and their pets strolling the parklike grounds.
Monthly, free public lectures are conducted in the Visitor and Education Center from world-renowned historians; and twice annually, the entire site is converted into a military encampment displaying equipment of soldiers and their families past and present.
Yellow school buses pour out students who spend time with re-enactors dressed in uniforms of Colonial, Civil War and WWII soldiers who describe their lives and their battles.
Behind the scenes, veterans donate their treasured items to curators so their story and the stories of their comrades can be told to future generations.
Today, we celebrate the 10th anniversary of Secretary of the Army Thomas White’s announcement that the U.S. Army authorized the development of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle.
Secretary White wanted the U.S. Army Military History Institute to “more fully communicate its invaluable holdings to the United States Army and the American people” and directed that the Army relocate its documents and holdings into a newly built state-of-the-art archives and co-located the archives with a privately developed “educational facility and a museum.”
For the last 10 years, the U.S. Army, the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Cumberland County and its local governments, the Army Heritage Center Foundation and its many donors have worked as partners to grow and develop the center and its programs.
In 2004, Ridgway Hall opened to provide the public access to the unofficial history of the U.S. Army. In 2010, the first phase of the Visitor and Education Center was completed and now hosts students and veterans in specially designed classrooms. The exhibit gallery in the center opened in May and displays some of the 55,000 objects in the USAHEC collections.
Outside is the Army Heritage Trail with its period structures, including a Vietnam Era Firebase and a WWII company street that allow us to understand how past soldiers lived and fought. Just completed this year, and at the far end of the complex, is the conservation facility where technicians and curators work to preserve the treasurers given to them — the diaries, photos, art and objects — that make personal the soldiers’ stories.
Our region and residents should be proud of what is being developed in Carlisle. The USAHEC is a national treasure that adds to the quality of life of our residents. Its free public programs and research repository support students and teachers in our classrooms.
The USAHEC also has benefited the region economically, supporting tourism initiatives in conjunction with other heritage sites across the commonwealth. Much remains to be accomplished, however. The Army believes it needs to remain connected to the American public, and it sees the USAHEC as important to the telling of its story.
To help the Army accomplish this goal, the foundation will need to partner with others to complete the second phase of the Visitor and Education Center and the permanent exhibit and interpretive galleries.
We also will need the continued support of our communities, regional governments and the state to achieve the vision that we all shared when we began this effort — to facilitate the “telling of the Army story ... one soldier at a time.”
Mike Perry is executive director of the Army Heritage Center Foundation, the lead agency supporting the development and expansion of the USAHEC campus in Middlesex Twp.