VICTORY BELLES - Key Persons
The long and astounding life of Adolfo Kaminsky (1925-2023) typifies a quite modern form of deception-the art of forging documents.
On June 22, Alexander Jefferson (1921-2022), one of the last of the Tuskegee Airmen, passed away at the age of 100.
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US Marine Corps Women's Reserve Sgt. and Museum family member Bernice Williams turns 100 years old on March 1, 2021. She says that her 1943-1945 service as a Marine made her a "better person."
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- President & Owner, the Berger Company / Wellesley, Massachusetts
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- Chairman and CEO, Airbus Americas, Inc
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- President, Goodyear Investment Company / New Orleans, Louisiana
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- Managing & Founding Principal, AQR Capital Management, LLC / Greenwich, Connecticut
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- Chairman, CEO, and Co - Founder / New Vista Acquisition Corporation / Chicago, Illinois
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- Chairman & CEO, Bollinger Enterprises, LLC / New Orleans, Louisiana
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- President and CEO Emeritus
Gordon H. "Nick" Mueller, PhD, former historian and Vice Chancellor at the University of New Orleans, served as Founding President and CEO of The National WWII Museum. During a distinguished career at UNO, Mueller made his mark as a popular teacher, Dean and Vice Chancellor. He played a lead role in creating the Metropolitan College and in building new extension and distance learning programs, the university Conference Center, Center Austria and the International Summer School in Innsbruck, Austria, and founded the UNO Research and Technology Park.
Gordon H. "Nick Mueller, PhD, former historian and Vice Chancellor at the University of New Orleans, served as Founding President and CEO of the National WWII Museum. During a distinguished career at UNO, Mueller made his mark as a popular teacher, dean, and administrator. He played a lead role in creating the Metropolitan College and in developing new extension and distance learning programs, the university Conference Center, Center Austria, and the International Summer School in Innsbruck, Austria. He also founded the UNO Research and Technology Park.
Mueller's most daunting professional challenge arose one afternoon in 1990 over glasses of sherry in the backyard of his close friend and colleague Stephen Ambrose. A renowned military historian, Ambrose proposed that they collaborate in building a D-Day museum at UNO to preserve Ambrose's 600-plus oral histories and create exhibits to tell the stories of the American troops who stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944. A New Orleans location for the museum was justified by a powerful wartime connection: Andrew Higgins, chief executive of Higgins Industries, built many thousands of landing craft and other boats for the Normandy assault and other Allied invasions, and was called "the man who won the war for us" by none other than Supreme Commander (and later President) Dwight Eisenhower. Since Ambrose and Mueller knew that Congress had no intention of building a museum in Washington, DC, to preserve the epic story of America's achievements in World War II, both men embraced the idea of doing so in the Crescent City.
Ambrose believed his notoriety as an historian, combined with Mueller's administrative prowess, would make it possible to preserve the oral histories and tell the D-Day story in a modest museum on the lakefront, at a cost of roughly $4 million. Neither Ambrose nor Mueller had the faintest notion that this initial concept would one day mushroom into a mega museum on six acres in downtown New Orleans. Some 28 years after birth of the museum-building idea, The National WWII Museum is ranked by TripAdvisor users as No. 3 among American museums and No. 8 among museums worldwide.
Mueller and Ambrose began by creating a nonprofit board of local business leaders. They secured a $4 million grant from Congress and began raising other monies for a museum that soon escalated in cost to more than $15 million. The historians found the fundraising difficult and their staff support limited to a single secretary. They twice ran out of money, as Ambrose was forced to pay the lone employee himself, and within years many board members were giving up. By 1998, the museum project had managed to acquire an abandoned warehouse that once housed a brewery and limited additional state and federal funding, but little else. The project was on life support.
At that desperate moment, Ambrose joined then-UNO Chancellor Gregory O'Brien and James Livingston, a Medal of Honor recipient and Chairman and CEO of the D-Day Museum Board, in persuading Mueller to become the next Chairman and CEO and commit to getting the museum open by June 6, 2000. O'Brien promised Mueller relief from his teaching duties to free up time for work on the museum. Mueller accepted the challenge with a personal commitment to raise $10 million, design the D-Day exhibits, finish the warehouse renovation, and open The National D-Day Museum on schedule. Little did Mueller know that the next 19 years of his life would be consumed by the project as he led a revitalized board through the grand opening and then guided the Museum's transformation into an institution recognized as one of the world's top museums.
After the Museum's opening in 2000, motivated by national success, publicity, and Congressional urging, Mueller accepted an appointment as founding President and CEO and worked with Ambrose to begin shaping an expanded vision for the Museum to portray all aspects of the American experience in World War II. Sadly, Ambrose passed away in 2002 just as execution of the Master Plan began. But Mueller pressed forward with a new national Board of Trustees to complete the plan and secure Congressional designation in 2004 as America's official museum for World War II, with an initial estimated construction cost of $225 million and a goal to finish by 2012.
By 2017, the capital expansion goal increased to $400 million. In the years since the 2004 development drive launch, Mueller, his staff, and the Museum board have had to overcome-in addition to the death of Ambrose-a devastating blow to the area economy from Hurricane Katrina and the economic recession of 2008. Supported by Trustees and other champions from around the country, Mueller and his team raised more than $300 million. In 2019 they will take part in grand opening events for The Higgins Hotel & Conference Center, the Hall of Democracy, and the Bollinger Canopy of Peace, with construction expected to begin on the Liberation Pavilion. Together these represent the major remaining projects in the Museum's Master Plan, and all should be complete by 2021. The campus now welcomes more than 700,000 visitors each year as it reaches over 200,000 teachers and students annually through its online education programs and national outreach.
Dr. Mueller's new role as President and CEO Emeritus affords him time for research and writing. The historian recently completed work on a new collection of personal accounts from the Allied invasion of Normandy. Published by Carlton Books and distributed by Sterling Publishing, "Everything We Have": D-Day 6.6.44, drawing on the Museum's collection of oral histories and artifacts, will mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Future writing projects include a history of the Museum.
Mueller continues to lead overseas WWII tours and speaks widely on the war experience, the American Spirit, and nonprofit leadership. He also provides advice and support to the Museum's top executives, working closely with the distinguished Presidential Counselors advisory group, and assisting learning initiatives led by the new Institute for the Study of War and Democracy.
Mueller's exceptional contributions to the preservation and interpretation of WWII history and his special contributions to public awareness of the D-Day landings in Normandy have resulted in numerous awards, including the French government's Legion of Honor, which in May 2016 was bestowed on him and two national figures who have assisted the Museum since its founding, Tom Hanks and Tom Brokaw. Mueller has also been elected to the board of the National History Center in Washington, DC, the public advocacy subsidiary of the American Historical Association.
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Jason Dawsey, PhD, is a Research Historian at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy.
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- Retired Chairman and CEO, American Funds Group / Las Vegas, Nevada / New Orleans, Louisiana
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- Vice President of People and Culture
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- Director for Curatorial Affairs at the National WWII Museum
- Senior Curator and Director for Curatorial Affairs
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Willy F. James, Jr. was one of seven African Americans to receive the Medal of Honor for service in World War II, an award delayed decades by bias and discrimination.
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- Managing Member, Lupo Enterprises, LLC / New Orleans, Louisiana
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Star Shirley Temple had a special relationship with the Hawaiian Islands. In the prewar years, she made several tours of Hawaii, delighting local and military audiences.
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- Public Historian and Museum Founder
Stephen Ambrose, (1936-2002) PhD, inspired and guided the early development of The National D-Day Museum with his close friend, Gordon H. "Nick" Mueller, PhD, a colleague in the History Department at the University of New Orleans and Vice Chancellor of the University. Ambrose's role as founder of the institution that would later become The National WWII Museum was strengthened in many ways by his celebrity as a bestselling historian who was sought after as a speaker and film consultant.
His notable works included D-Day, Citizen Soldiers and Band of Brothers, all exploring major episodes and themes from WWII history, as well as books on the Lewis and Clark Expedition and the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, and biographies of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon. Ambrose was a consultant to the blockbuster Normandy invasion film Saving Private Ryan, won an Emmy as a producer of the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, and served as a commentator for the Ken Burns documentary Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery. He received the National Humanities Medal from President Clinton, and during opening ceremonies for The National D-Day Museum, was awarded the Medal for Distinguished Public Service by Defense Secretary William Cohen.
Ambrose's collaboration with Mueller led to the establishment of the Eisenhower Center in 1985 at UNO to provide administrative support for Ambrose's efforts to interview American and Allied soldiers, airmen and sailors who were involved with planning and executing the climactic D-Day landings, Operation Overlord, on June 6, 1944. Ambrose scoured the nation to collect accounts of the veterans, many of whom he took on tours he and Mueller organized-following in the footsteps of the invasion forces from England to Normandy, through the Battle of the Bulge and on to Hitler's Eagle's Nest in the Bavarian Alps. Ambrose's use of these eyewitness accounts and his intimate knowledge of the Eisenhower papers ultimately led to his bestsellers on the D-Day invasion and other WWII subjects in the 1990s.
Ambrose's tours in Europe and his 600-plus personal interviews with veterans fueled his resolve to establish a national museum dedicated to the Allies' heroic battles to defeat fascist regimes that had attacked America, especially the D-Day invasion of Nazi-held Normandy. He had long tried to persuade members of Congress that the federal government should build a museum exploring D-Day or all of World War II - to no avail. Impatient with inaction in Washington, Ambrose turned to his best friend Nick Mueller in 1990 to enlist his help in building a D-Day museum in the research park Mueller was developing for the university on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. The museum would overlook the very location where boat-builder Andrew Higgins had tested his famous landing craft that proved essential to the amphibious assault on the Normandy beaches as well as many other landings on enemy-held beaches in Europe and in the Pacific.
Following years of research and hundreds of interviews, and after walking the beaches and battle sites of Europe with the veterans, Ambrose cemented a deep regard for America's citizen soldiers, the workers on the Home Front, and the hardships endured to achieve victory. Ambrose told Mueller of his plan to build the museum in New Orleans: "We are here, you have free land on the lakefront where Higgins tested his boats, and New Orleans was home to Higgins Industries, producer of 12,000 of the landing craft and other boats critical to the Allied effort." On that day in 1990, Ambrose recalled a story from his conversation with former President and Supreme Commander Eisenhower in the sixties when Ambrose was editing the political and military leader's papers. It was then that Eisenhower astonished Ambrose with his comment that "Andrew Higgins was the man who won World War II for us, because we had no boats anywhere at the outset of the war that could land men over an open beach."
With that inspiration, Ambrose and Mueller got started on the museum plan. Their dream was realized 10 years later when The National D-Day Museum opened on June 6, 2000 before crowds of over 200,000 on the streets of New Orleans. The event brought together Secretary of Defense Cohen, NATO defense ministers, Tom Brokaw, Tom Hanks, members of Congress and the Louisiana Legislature, the New Orleans mayor, and various other representatives of Allied powers from World War II. The ceremonies drew nonstop coverage from C-SPAN and other media outlets. It was an historical moment for WWII veterans and their families, for Louisiana and for the nation.
But the grand opening was just the beginning of a more ambitious vision that was to emerge following the celebrations. US Senators Ted Stephens of Alaska and Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, two decorated WWII veterans, pressed Ambrose and Mueller from the day of the opening to expand the mission of the Museum to cover every facet of the American experience in World War II. If they and the Museum's trustees agreed, the senators promised initial funding from Congress and national designation. Ambrose and Mueller forged ahead, and other major support came from US Senator Mary Landrieu, the state of Louisiana and from a vigorous Museum board chaired by shipbuilder Boysie Bollinger.
Although Stephen Ambrose passed away in October 2002, the quest of the two history professors gained momentum two years later when the Museum's Master Plan for an expanded 300,000-square-foot complex was approved by the Board of Trustees, bearing an initial price tag of $225 million, and a Congressional act sanctioning "America's National WWII Museum" became law. The act reflected the Museum's expanded mission to explore the entire war and its legacies in America's fight for freedom, democracy and human rights at home and abroad-in times of conflict and peace.
It was a new beginning, a new challenge. Steve Ambrose had passed the torch to his friend and to new supporters who resolved to build a monumental institution dedicated to telling the story of America's role in the global war, employing a unique mix of personal accounts, immersive exhibits and visitor experiences. The vision and mission were clear. The funding was not. Success or failure of any great quest is indistinguishable at the outset. But the purposes envisioned by Stephen Ambrose remained a powerful motivator.
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