Are We There Yet?

Museum's military history extends to Civil War

Displayed outside Jacksonville Museum of Military History is a Republic F-105 Thunderchief, a fighter-bomber widely used in the Vietnam War.
Displayed outside Jacksonville Museum of Military History is a Republic F-105 Thunderchief, a fighter-bomber widely used in the Vietnam War.

The display that greets visitors entering Jacksonville Museum of Military History adds the visceral impact of real names to the assertion famously attributed to Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman: "War is hell."

It also buttresses the museum's mission statement "to foster an appreciation for the sacrifices made by local men and women defending our country, both on and off the battlefield."

The wall-size exhibit, shaped like a map of the Natural State, lists the 596 Arkansans who died in the Vietnam War during the 1960s and '70s. There's the briefest of supporting text, allowing the identities of all those lost young lives to speak for themselves.

A counterpoint memorial outside the museum, which is housed on the World War II site of the Arkansas Ordnance Plant's administration building, honors civilian casualties of the Cold War. It carries the names of 53 workmen killed on Aug. 9, 1965, when fire and toxic smoke engulfed a Titan II missile silo under renovation near Searcy.

Inside the museum, video displays take viewers back to that tragedy via compelling footage that includes interviews with the only two survivors. Companion videos recount the Titan silo explosion near Damascus on Sept. 19, 1980, that killed one worker and ejected a thermonuclear warhead. The H-bomb's safety checks kept it from detonating and devastating central Arkansas.

The museum, perhaps the state's best such military attraction, covers Arkansans' roles in conflicts going back to the Civil War and the nearby Battle of Reed's Bridge. Under construction is an exhibit relating to the 1991 and 2003 invasions of Iraq.

Women are featured in the World War II exhibits, reflecting the fact that 70 percent of employees at the teeming Arkansas Ordnance Plant were female. In 1941, before the wartime boom, Jacksonville's population was 400. The plant, which made detonators and relays for artillery shells, employed 14,091 workers at its peak before closing at war's end in 1945.

Much of the plant's site is now occupied by Little Rock Air Force Base, which opened in 1955. Displayed on the museum's lawn are a Republic F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bomber and a Bell UH-1 Huey helicopter, both from the Vietnam War era.

The base's role as a military transport hub is marked by museum exhibits that include the cockpit of a C-130 Hercules in which visitors can take a virtual flight. That display sits near the mock-up of a menacing Titan II missile warhead and a hulking trailer-mounted troop field kitchen from the 1980s.

There's no specific Arkansas connection to artwork that hangs near the map listing the state's Vietnam War fatalities. But the copies of Norman Rockwell posters illustrating the Four Freedoms laid out by President Franklin D. Roosevelt still speak to American ideals, however dimmed they may be by 21st-century realities.

Rockwell's family scenes, printed in 1943 in the Saturday Evening Post, represent Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom From Want and Freedom From Fear. U.S. military forces, when properly deployed, have helped secure these aspirations for more than two centuries.

Jacksonville Museum of Military History, 100 Veterans Circle, Jacksonville, is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday. Admission is $3 ($2 for senior citizens and military personnel, $1 for students). Take U.S. 67/167 Exit 9 onto Main Street and go east about a half mile before turning left at the post office. Call (501) 241-1943 or visit jaxmilitarymuseum.org.

A pleasant lunch alternative to Jacksonville's numerous chain fast-food eateries is Wee Bettys Cafe, 1336 John Harden Drive, near the museum. It serves a potpourri of interesting Irish, Scottish and English fare.

Style on 02/09/2016

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