Sadness oozed like mud coloring the Mississippi River in the foyer at The National D-Day Museum in New Orleans.
It was a must-see on a recent trip to Louisiana where we launched with 14 friends on a Caribbean cruise.
My husband, Chuck, and I loved our first sailing experience, a celebration of our 30th wedding anniversary.
Seeing the museum was the only somber moment of a nine-day trip.
When you enter the gorgeous downtown New Orleans building, right inside the door are rows of wheelchairs. Visitors who are veterans of World War II, in their 70s, 80s and 90s, may need assistance viewing impressive exhibits about their war.
For many, traveling from parts near and far to visit the museum, it might be their last big trip.
My dad, a World War II Army veteran who earned a Silver Star, is 84. He teases that he doesn’t even buy green bananas.
I wrote about my father’s name being inscribed in a brick in Olympia at the state’s World War II memorial. It’s important that those who served are never forgotten. We must keep the events and lessons from each war available for future generations.
Plan a long morning or afternoon with children or grandchildren at the D-Day Museum because the lessons are many. It was particularly poignant to visit the museum before Sunday’s 60th anniversary of the invasion.
The first thing one notices overhead at the D-Day Museum are airplanes suspended from the high ceiling. The 16,000-square-foot showcase includes exhibits, oral histories, artifacts, documents and photographs.
Learn about D-Day, when the Allies stormed beaches of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, to wrestle beachheads from German troops in Nazi-occupied France. Exhibits encompass the entire war and in a few years the museum will become a comprehensive World War II archive.
One of our friends who cruised with us, Lester Wright of Lynnwood, is a true history buff. He toured the museum with his wife, Patti, who wears a POW-MIA bracelet for Robert D. Owen, lost in action May 23, 1968, in Laos.
“The most striking display I found was of the toy soldiers representing the numbers of troops facing us at the start of the war,” Wright said.
“On two fronts we were outnumbered three to one. It brought into sharp focus that we could easily have lost everything if the country had not pulled together to support the war effort.”
While my friends savored audio recounts of the war abroad and support at home, I found volunteer Don Summers, a Navy coxswain who served in the Pacific on D-Day. He sat in front of a replica Higgins boat he said won the war.
The landing craft shown in the movie “Private Ryan” were from Korea, Summers said with a huff. World War II Higgins boats were long gone by the time Hollywood came calling. As each visitor passed the boat, Summers, wearing shoes with easily fastened Velcro straps, asked if anyone had questions.
He retells wartime stories at the museum two days a week.
On the ground floor is a real Sherman tank. Run your hand over the tough hide and see if it gives you shivers. Authentic German-cement sentry boxes, like tiny space capsules, were creepy. The part that got to me was climbing ropes hanging four stories down the wall, as if they were flung over sides of ships.
I pictured men scrambling down the ropes to Higgins boats, many minutes from being killed. Then I noticed an older couple, he wearing a hat decorated with World War II medals, leaving a screening room after a war video.
“What if they drop more bombs in Iraq?” she asked.
“It may come to that,” he answered.
They headed to the gift shop, where I bought Rosie the Riveter dog tags, a pewter POW-MIA key chain and the famous Uncle Sam “I Want You” war poster.
I wanted tangible memories of one of the only museums in the country that closes for Mardi Gras.
Columnist Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451 or oharran@heraldnet.com.
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