so what we're going to talk

about is memories. for the most part. and and these are, as i said, the lighthearted side. and have some slides already ready up there to indicate the kind of the connectivity here. but between the story beginning with the landing craft and going to the present, but then i'm not sure where i point this. there you go. so that's the cover of the new book that mike just ntned. and that is pictorial photographic essay with. a little slislim history and it's the next. this is the prequel. the sequel will be out in a couple of years. so and the story really has a couple of beginnings the first really goes back and i want spend a little bit of time with

riendship with stephen ambrose that has preceded the the epiphany or the eureka moment. i would say, and goes bac to 1971 when i first help as part of the team recruiting him to you, y'know, lsu in new orleans at that time and the second beginning is when he had that moment and 1990 that led to the idea for the d-day museum and the lsu uno and uno are all mixed up in all of that. and i just got to say to that, i've said it several times over. university of new orleans is largely forgotten here, but for ten years at least eight of those from 1990, we didn't have any staff at the museum. we got capital money from the federal government. we couldn't spend it on, so we weren't raising much private money, so we didn't have much money, pay for staff or none i mean, there was a part time assistant. the university of new orleans

had senior level besides steve and myself who were involved all those years, the vice president of financial accounting and the foundation and so forth, so but in any event, and we were go quick, fly through some photographs that go back to all the various activities that that steve ambrose and i were just that hit it off together and grace and stephanie over there, they were all little kids when when all this started and there's only two surviving daughters. and i don't know how old both of you guys were in 71, but you were. about 11. okay, grace. a little bit younger. so our families of grew up together and steve and i loved everything. sports, outdoors and sailing and and we got into projects and all kinds of adventures and think it's important to understand a little bit of that because it's all of projects and conferences we put on together and and

started his d-day tour and those things built up a reservoir of trust between us so vacations, camping everything was going on those all those years and this is going to be a little scrolling time that going back to those adventures i don't know i think that through well there's young nick starting our summer school austria and there steve a d-day to the rhine tours we started in 1980. and actually that has some personal areas we're sailing down in, in the virgin islands and over austria. one of the castles over there, the summer school that we visited and up in wisconsin with his son hugh, and just some one week we went off to saint john and bought a villa together down there. and steve and then comes on private run and the hollywood to the rescue.

steve never could decide if he wanted to be meriwether lewis or hemingway,ut that's sort of a little bit a flashback. so to to give you kind of a sense of for 20 years leading up to that party, we just did together, every time we meet in backyards, it was either planning a trip or sailing trip or going somewhere or doing something or starting out a projects and during those years not only just we always agreed that we were going to do something and, a lot of times it was pretty challenging, but other times it was just a pure, pure pleasure. but for me, i'm marcia, i chief, i had sort of the entrepreneurial spirit and i was a ministration by then and a dean and vice chancellor and i had always had the job at the university i was the designated startup guy. so i had to figure out how to generate the programs i wanted to do over in austria or wherever without any funds and

actually they had to generate new revenue. so was that part of it? and steve knew about that. and so that day when you finally decided to do a d-day museum, he thought i'd be the one to try to figure that out. but in any event, this is where it started. i mea tee pictures i, higgins and ambrose, and that is the the epiphany moment. and and said we can put my eisenhower our center in this museum and that'll take care of all of these 650 oral histories of d-day veterans that he had he had collected. and the museum would be a way to support and sustain that eisenhower center and all of the research that he had done because steve was thinking you know in four or five six years i'm going to retire and i want to make sure that this center continues forever. and and it was going to be on the lakefront where i was

getting ready to build research park or develop it. and i'll come to that in just a moment. so i had done all these other programs and his tours and summer school largest in europe and in america conferences created college at the university and one thing that both of us loved was to bring history, to life in larger context for larger audiences. so that cut across a great many of the things that we had done up until this point. but what really brought us together is this you've seen how baumgarten before, and i'll let him speak for himself because that was the german nation of we started running across the beach. we were about 500 yards out. so we're neck water. when we got to the actual beach, we the sand was wet and we were

tied was treacherous. it went out fast and came fast. came in one one inch a minute. so we had to sand. we were running across sand the 300 yards out. so i landed. there's artificial pier on that beach. it wasn't there on d-day. i landed right with that artificial pier is a little to the right of that one tank that was firing so i was all the way on the western part of dog in sector. the next beach over was charlie beach. that's where the rangers actually landed. they didn't land on dore green. but anyway, there were a group of us running across the beach with our rifles at, port arms, which is the rifle across your chest. when we got to about a hundred and 35 yards away from the seawall, a machine gun spray came from the trenches up on the

bluff. and i heard a loud thud. am i right front? and my rifle vibrated? i turned it over. there was a clean hole through its receiver, which is a little rectangular plate in of the trigger. god, my seven bullets had in the magazine section had stopped the german. another behind me to the left and guy was gone too. i hit the sand behind the hedgehog, which about 130 yards from the seawall and i observed to my right private robert dettmer, fairfield, connecticut i was yelling like he tripped over the spun completely around lying on his back and yelling, i'm here amid mom mother. and then he was silent. i looked over to my left and sergeant clarence of lynchburg,

virginia. i always mention their names and where they came from. i don't want people to forget about them. clarence robertson was staggering by me without his helmet. gaping hole in the left side of his forehead, his blond was streaked with blood. i was yelling, get down! and this used to be my nightmare is appealing. get down because i never forgot that scene. and i guess he couldn't hear me anyway. the on that beach was horrendous all these shells coming. i got flamethrowers blowing up with the guys getting on fire a noise was, was tremendous and it went on for seven years before he had the idea, he had actually tried to convince members of congress to do a world war two museum or a d-day museum and his offices in the research center where he was collecting, transcribing these oral

histories. and gunter was ed and these would come in and and he'd say, come here and listen to this. and it be a story like that or. listen to this audio tape or this transcribe. this stuff is great stuff. we're saving it. it's going to all go in my book on d-day. so this was going on from the time created the eisenhower center in three up until the moment that we set in either his backyard or mine but thatas his little gazebo tt hind his backyard after katrina i went took that picture. so it was kind of off kilter. and he got moved by water a little bit. but we'd sit there after noon and he was close to campus. i'd go by and and that's when we when he had the idea to do a research part in a museum on the research park, and he said, i just gotten that assignment out to and that site right there was where hitested the landing craft. and he says the perfect site, it's free land.

i've got my eisenhowter. i'll give you my oral histories and all we need is $1,000,000 and you heard that we we missed by a little bit. i thought it was 4 million. and there are a few zeros after that. now that over 400 million. but in any let me just look have steve. who it was a world war and half of it was in the pacific that's significance of the pacific theater we have built this museum the people new orleans the people of louisiana people from all over the world. it began my backyard when. i was having a sherry with nick and i received quite a few from the men that i had been interviewing for a book on d-day. i said, nick, we got to build a museum to hold style. i can't keep storing it in my would cause over anyway and that's how i got started and

arthur davis. the famous architect, said i'll tell you, we talked and got going and arthur said, you've got to charley guggenheim to make a film for you and we did. and he said, and you got to get jack macy as the he had met jack when they were working on the louisiana centennial exhibit here wasn't the centennial exhibit. what was called i've already forgotten the world's fair the louisiana world's fair. so i went up to new to meet jack and we went out to alice and. he had designed the museum there we were walking through and it's most impressive. and we came to we just stopped and you'll see him in the pacific exhibit here, right in the middle, a little up case, and then pass around it.

and inside, one pair of baby shoes and. then a little biography of those shoes they had come all the way from hamburg, germany to ellis island must have been infant who was wearing it. and there were those shoes and jack said to me, you in museums was stopping at this you see in museums smaller is better and you look at the well so that was a. 2001 one of the last times steven ambrose appeared on camera. it was just about eight or nine months before he passed away. but in any event, go back to the story and that's the research park in the master plan. you can see an inset down there on, the left, that is the location actually sited the pavilion to there.

and but our board of directors were smarter than we were and they they kept saying, you got to go downtown. well, that didn't that decision didn't come overnight. it was a big controversy. and and it was at that steve admitted in the newspaper. he said, i lost a lot of friends, burned a lot of bridges because of insisting that it be in this research site for so long. and was president and in charge developing the site. but i kind of had a sense where the board was going and steve wanted it there. the chancellor wanted it there. i was caught my best friend and my boss was really hard to say. steve we're called downtown because this is what the business leaders want. but you know, it was a it was a threshold issue that was deeper than that and we had a consultant, a brilliant woman from baltimore come came in to talk to us about marketing and developing we got we could pay for some consultants and jack macy the designer was one of

them on the exhibit side and she did a lot of museum work and she posed a question to the and she said, you know, there are two options for you and which way you decide is going to determine where you locate this museum. you've got to decide if you're going to be education research center. that happens to have a museum attached or you're going to be a museum that happens to have an education center attached. both ideas were were if you decide research and education is the singular most important thing you want to accomplish in the eisenhower center, you can get a lot of grants, a lot of foundation money from from just being a research center on a university campus. you won't have many tours and see you've said, well, we don't need a lot of tours. we just to support my eisenhower center. but if you decide it's you need the tourists and we think you do because it'll be an attraction and we don't want to spend this time money if we don't have

tourists. it ended up then going downtown. we had a lot of disappointments. during the first five or six years we were supposed to open in 1994. that didn't happen. we did have academy award winning a nominated film, the top five. they remembered a great, great film. and we had a big premiere of that. then we all went off. steve went off, briefed the white house gang, the clintons and christopher white, all going to normandy for d-day. we're with tom brokaw, 500 people on a tour ship for a full day in 94 was a really a moving moment. i've been there many with steve, but that was a powerful, powerful moment. and tom brokaw had steve on stage all day long. was katie on d-day on those commemoration events and brokaw

look, you can talk about the d-day museum building anytime you want, you know, so steve did i thought, oh, man, you know money's just going to come pouring in well wrong that too. so but it was he our our visibility up and it was up and down and steve and were still teaching doing our job at the university we on the board but the board had its own life and chairman and and anyway had never hired an executive director because didn't have the money to do it or didn't make the money available for that. and so it was really a volunteer board times and went broke a couple times mean except that federal money of 4 million we were just living on fumes and steve was having to write checks out of his own checkbook to pay for the one half time secretary that we had and so it was a it was and it kind of is one of those times now. i was on sabbatical back to teaching after 20 years at as a

vice chancellor and i was in middle of sabbatical. it was a cold january day, bright and beautiful outside, and we just bought this old warehouse down here and where we were renovating that, we got money from the state to do that. the last million dollars of federal money went to buy that old warehouse, which was uninhabitable. i mean, had a change walls, new roof new wiring, air conditioning and and fortunately, the state come through with some money for capital. and so that was going on. and i'm coming down to the executive committee meeting and who's sitting out standing outside on a cold day. i mean, it was like one of those 30 degree days and the wind was blowing. it was a clear sky. but i was i had a jacket on and they're standing on a on the front porch of that eisenhower center and next to the warehouse general livingston medal of honor recipient greg o'brien, the chancellor. and steve, i'm thinking guys are crazy. i'm trying to get in that place.

i'm not going to stand out there and oh, what are they doing? i said, well, i know stephen's out there smoking is he always had to go out by now. you had to go outside to smoke, but general livingston and what's i'm trying to remember and they grabbed me and on the way in said, nick, well, wait a minute here. and i said, what for? it's cold. he says, well, general, we're thinking about you for the being the next chairman. oh said, this is not in my plans here. ambrose grabbed my hand, said nick got me into this. you got to get us out of it. and i said, well, can you give me a few months to think about this? because the elections in it till next january and. i got home that night and i said, steve, what world are you doing? me you had already developed some other plans that we were going to do before just a month before, he said, i needed reinforcements. i couldn't tell you because i didn't have o'brien there the, chancellor. in general, he says you'd say no, and so any event. so sometimes you get, you know,

hooked up on things you didn't expect at all. but it was a pretty desperate time, i mean, to pick another historian to run this place. you knew the business leaders were running out of gas and a lot of people at that time thought, even with the warehouse that we weren't going to make it, that we were on arrival. i mean, i had friends, the business community in the newspaper that you really gave us a break. but not publicizing the the desperate financial situations that we were we were in. but in any event. i should say that as the the only rendering that we have extant of e building of the museum on the on the lakefront and there at the corner on the right is the original warehouse. the left will come to that story in just a moment in any event we got going. we had a couple of years to to

meet yet the fourth goal i think it was for opening and a boise was fortunately by vice chairman at the time and gave me tremendous support in in developing them the museum and getting and i'm going to leave that story till later but some state funds for the louisiana pavilion in any event we got to hollywood folks i mean some of them one of them was still with us last night and the night before that, tom hanks and steven spielberg and saving private ryan. right. in those years of in the summer of 99 was a premier. and said, i'll help you guys promote this movie. it's the best war movie i've ever seen on world war two. and he says in you got to agree to come to our grand opening and help out a little bit. and he said, i didn't want any money, but he traveled with them

for three or four weeks, interviewing on television, promoting, promoting the movie and so here they are, the tour. the night before we opened the museum, there. in any event. and. here is the famous opening ribbon shot that the some of you remember who were there. and i know tre a few here who were ther general dave myers was chair of the grand opening committee and secretary defense cohen, bill cohen detailed to marshal the greatest parade of military parades since world war two. and i can say with great pride that he did exactly that. and there 200,000 people on the streets of new orleans. we had celebrities, we had senators. we had all of our board we had friends from all over the nation. there was a parade that went on

for hours. it was three days of very events, a huge reenactment out in city park. so was a it was a time for all of us. we just and of course, were no competing news cycles. so they're going out of the news cycle. so we had national even global coverage, c-span and cnn covering it wall to wall for about 8 hours every day. and they ran those shows for forever and visitation it was was tremendous boys succeeded as chairman initially for years but his successor went to washington herschel abbotts of boise another four years. and at that that time. well, it goes back to the opening moment and boise was the chairman of board after september of. 2000. and i couldn't have had a better board leader to to help into

what became even more ambitious than our little $4 million project that turned out to be 25 million. and boise tremendously well-respected business leader, head of bollinger shipyards at the time, very familiar in the halls of congress. and when we talked to him about talked about doing all of world war two, he said, i know how to do that and to interesting thing, there's one story there that i'll just mention now that senator stevens, who was a very close to ambrose, he loved stephen ambrose and invited him up to alaska. there's fishing camp, any number of times and wanted us to do all of world war two because his war was in the pacific in the china, burma, india theater. distinguished flying and we'd agreed to do the deeds of the pacific because there were all

those islands in the pacific also d-day landings and higgins boats were were part all of them but he came by and i think boise was at a fundraiser with him a week before we opened on sunday. he came by for private tours. he had something in alaska so he could not be at the grand opening. so he calls us after his tour. he pulls me and steve into my office and off his staffers and sat us down and said, this is the best museum in america. world war two, he says i know it's d-day and i you're doing the pacific days, but if you boys will take on all of world war two, all. and nobody else could hear this. me and steve. steve was exhausted that i was too. he rolled his. oh, god, nick, don't say yes. of course you know, if i had said no, he had walked out and

it had been fine, that would have been it. and i said, well, we'll try and boys. he said, yeah we'll try and went to i went to i mean, steve said and i went to boise and said, boy, this is what the senator wants to do. and he said, my god. he says, that's that's money. so we he got us three or 4 million a year for three years. and he said, talk to your board, figure out how to do it much. it's going to cost and and i'll help you get going. well, in any event. so that was the days of the pacific that was the vision for the expansion. and as boise said a couple of times, i think in the last few days, it came out pretty much i mean, we moved theater to the corner, but these at a bunch of acrolling videos. that's the center for the study of american spirit. that was not that that wasn't

significant but stephen ambrose and i thought that was to be on prime corner that's the heart of the education and research program. that's right. where the is now. but we actually went and decided paid the architect. we were ready to build that 2002 and a yeah. did review and it was a had a press conference i mean so we this was really big deal three floors of bitty rooms and research archives place for publication and distance learning programs. anyway, it was a our center for the study. the american spirit is what steve and i kind of named it. that became a mouthful. so we got another mouthful. as it is. you're easier to explain nowadays, it's the institute for the study of war democracy. so the jenny craig institute. so anyway, we had a wake up here

with katrina and so we were back initch again and peo were, you know, new orleans would never recover. the big controversy or issues on the board. we couldn't meet. the first meeting we had was in dallas try to consider a number of different options about going forward. and i'm just going to leave some these images a scroll through you this it's all over the campus here the various buildings as they're getting built and and give you some sense of of how it progressed and our who won competition for a zinger said instead of one single building let's seven buildings that was a critical decision and the selection of the architect is to. one victory at a time and somehow bart figured out that

this young nonprofit institution didn't federal income for several hundred million dollars to build a 300,000 square foot museum so said just do one building at a time. a few years later, he said, are you ever going to get to the second building? so but in any event and there was a china india theater and a train car and a dog tag experience that. you all pretty well familiar with, i think in the japanese internment camp and the home and hotel and conference center. so an event. it was a string extraordinary chairman. boise david volker. pete wilson. phil sadri. herschel abbott. richard acheson and jim corder,

who led us through years when all of that was being built. this is now the ambrose reading room. steve ambrose was asked ar of times in board meetings, why don't we put your on one of these buildings? and what did you exhibit some boys? your memories do not my name anywhere. if you have a chance to put a name up, put the name up of the veteran or a donor to us. get this built, but not my name. and so he was very about that. but when i my office over to cross the street, i said, i think steve would appreciate and be okay with a reading room, which has his typewriter and many of his books in that in that room room. well in any event you get on the more serious side we begin to move now toward toward liberation. and i would just before.

leaving a topic of stephen ambrose that he left us with a big idea a compelling idea at the basis of all. is that idea continued to move us forward. it must have been around 3:00 all of a sudden we see the title comes. it's we see the packard soldier. must have been young man maybe 20 maybe 22 heavy set with a big helmet. he comes in, he looks at us, starts crying, he cries one us. one of our boys. i don't know how. but he comes out and, starts singing yankee doodle dandy and

and we all join in. don't know the words, we don't know the music. he starts singing and doodle dandy we all start singing yankee doodle. and soon as there's first american soldier comes in there is a whole battalion of american soldiers. we are standing there singing yankee doodle dandy without the words and they stand and cry. they look at us and they cry. i mean, battle hardened soldiers, men that probably were in the battle of the bulge or whatever they were fighting, they stand. they look at us and cry. we stand there, cry them and sing yankee doodle. that scene is. something which i'll never forget. i mean, it is like saying, what took you so long? are you. something it could project conferences and program and

overseas tours to to anybody is interested or enthusiastic about a world war two so it was a love of learning and exploding these ideas into larger formats that ideas of just war and peace the struggle freedom and democracy. it was ranks right up there with them. human rights civil rights tolerance. how was begin wars and the liberating power that changes the lives of people. and boise and i want to say that our chairs and board members all through the years of struggling with exhibits and working with gallagher's team and for zynga's team got into the ditches of the planning and really had their arms around every concept that we had.

now, of course, one of the conditions that stipulation is i should say that senator stevens said that if you do of world war two, i'll get you the congressional designation as the official museum in this country. that was a huge deal. as boys, you will. it didn't come with money every year it came with capital money that we had to fight for for construction, money we're not like a smithsonian that they had gets operating funds every year. we to generate so we're a very entrepreneurial institution but they changed our mission to cover all about all of world war two. so when you go through liberation pavilion which we have just seen some you think about the legacy of world war two, what means today is the last part of that mission and

it's been the pavilion to. and like bell was the tip of the spear those last few years and got us across the finish line and and robert citino is a senior historian on the project for all the way to the end as well and myself and steven and our curators collectors and board members. it's been hard, but it's provocative and it helps people understand that we have a point of view here at this museum that we were engaged in an extra potential struggle, a fight for civilization, as we knew it. it took everything this country had its material economic, financial and human technological resources of everyone in the nation in to get

through that war to a peaceful end at for our parts of the world world. we believe that the american and tomorrow he had something to do with that final victory and that was indeed the war that changed the world. what it means today is wrapped up a little by the even. but i'm going to. do the legacy is a realization on the part of america's youngsters today in, the mid part of the 21st century, at the end of the 21st century and on through the millennium, a realization that freedom doesn't come for free. the sacrifices have to be made.

somebody's got to pay the price. if we're going to grow as we have, as a freest and richest nation that ever was. but that depends on the willingness of children to go out and defend and they will. they are the children of democracy. and when democracy is under attack, they're going to step up and be counted and do what required just as their grandfather was and great grandfathers did. well, we know that as uplifting an inspiration or as a liberation pavilion is what we have achieved. many dark things came of world war two when genocide, 65 million dead, two thirds of them civilians. kamikaze attacks. that later we could happen to us again. and 911 attacks on mosques,

suicide attacks today there's challenges in israel and ukraine potentially taiwan i'll, autocracy and authoritarian regimes are still enemies of freedom and democracy so this liberation has great relevance but we can't let the darker sides of our history, the world's history, not just ours, paralyze us from moving forward. i think that's one of the great things about america and i think it comes through here, we don't get everything right all the way, but we keep working at it and we keep improving. well, there's aaste it's a complete now thanks to uches on it here with theshing liberal asian pavilion, a canopy in the last few years and i think it's a come a long way since the backyard in the

beginning of that friendship those boys he said almost everything that we envisioned the canopy looks a little different. but all the buildings are pretty much as they were. so have to have work with my dear stephen ambrose and boycie and, all of the other chairs and, board members and presidential counselors over the years to bring this magnificent museum to life has been one of the great pleasures. my life. i'm very blessed to have had a part of that. i've always said people wonder what see would take. well, steve came back to earth today and saw this. he probably have a heart attack, go back to wherever he went, came from. but in any event, i see i have one minute and 48 seconds before the hook comes out. so thank you all. and special, special to those

here today. and i hope gave you a little bit of flavor of the friendship that started all and and where it led. so the moral of the story is don't drink too much cheap. share it with your best friend. that's a big idea so. and i think mike gets it and i will move on. so thank you all very much.