Scholars doing research, students on a school trip, veterans sharing experiences, volunteers, and visitors are all part of the vibrant Army Heritage and Education Center, the Carlisle-based organization that chronicles the Army’s role in American history.
That role isn’t viewed globally, but through the experiences of individual servicemen and women, said Matt Dawson, executive director. “That’s why our slogan is, ‘Telling the Army Story… One Soldier at a Time.”
The center was founded in October 2001, through a private-public initiative by the Secretary of the Army. Its 56-acre campus is located about a half-mile from Carlisle Barracks and the U.S. Army War College, of which AHEC is a component.
AHEC comprises the Military History Institute, a research library and archives for personal papers of soldiers and their families; the Conservation Center, to preserve documents and artifacts; and more. The Visitor and Education Center – AHEC’s centerpiece – offers educational activities and an exhibit gallery (as well as a gift shop and cafeteria).
Future plans for AHEC include an art gallery, promenade, and additional exhibiting space and multipurpose rooms for the VEC.
There’s also the mile-long Army Heritage Trail, an “outdoor museum” that highlights every era of U.S. Army history through exhibits, artifacts, and living-history presentations.
“The trail is our billboard,” Dawson said. “It includes, for example, a Civil War-era log cabin and World War I trench line. Recently we added a HESCO checkpoint used in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The trail is open to the public daily, dawn to dusk, and some use it as a running track. “But we encourage visitors to come into the Center and experience everything we have to offer,” he said.
“Everything,” so far, is 15 million items – classified documents, books, veterans’ surveys, maps, artifacts, military publications, photographs, oral histories and general officer collections. Increasingly, holdings are being digitized, to “make the facility user-friendly,” Dawson said.
Last year the center attracted 127,000 visitors—among them, many schoolchildren; this year’s goal is 150,000.
An excellent introduction to AHEC is the opening on November 9 of the exhibit, “The Soldier’s Experience,” which will run indefinitely in VEC’s 7000-sq. ft. exhibiting space, with some elements changing over time.
“The story is told bottom up, not from the generals down, as in the typical history,” said Jack Leighow, director of the Army Heritage Museum and exhibit curator. “It focuses on soldiers – their words and their artifacts.”
Through holographic technology, in fact, visitors can see the same person as a civilian and soldier in shifting photographs.
When visitors enter the exhibit, they will receive a dog tag connected to an actual soldier. They will then move from one section to another depicting each conflict the Army has faced, starting with the Spanish-American War through today’s operations. Each section includes letters and diaries, photos, videotapes, and a few large artifacts, such as a World War I tank and a Korean War bunker, in which one can “hear” the sounds of night attacks. There are also interactive exhibits.
But there is also a separate room devoted to photographs of the Civil War; AHEC has the largest such collection anywhere.
“The exhibit reflects our holdings accurately,” Dawson said. “We’re an archive and library, educational center, museum, historical society, fabrication and conservation facility, and visitor’s center.”
The nonprofit Army Heritage Center Foundation creates and distributes educational materials for schools and coordinates National History Day in PA, an annual student competition. The foundation supports construction of AHEC’s public facilities such as VEC.
“AHEC is a kind of Library of Congress for the Army,” said Mike Perry, executive director of the Foundation.
The center sponsors Army Heritage Day, an annual event at which veterans speak. Other educational programs include on-site and traveling interpretive exhibits, monthly public readings and lectures, and university partnerships supporting AHEC’s veteran oral history program. Former servicemen and women are invited to participate by filling out a survey form.
The center invites artifact and document donations, Leighow, the museum’s director, said. “But potential donors should understand that often fine materials might not be accepted if there’s no story to go with them,” he said.
AHEC, after all, is about stories.
To donate Army-related documents and artifacts, call Greg Statler, Collections Manager, at 717-245-3094. For general information, visit: www.usahec.org, or call 717-245-3972.
