i've been watching the construction of this complex along 81 for quite some time. i have a friend who graduated from ship that works in the military history institute at carlisle barracks. he said their offices will be housed in the new institute. i've also been told that a new interchange with I-81/Army Heritage Drive is being planned as part of the overall master plan. my uncle who is a union electrician also worked on the project. pretty cool
Military history to come alive
Paratroopers, re-enactors to help dedicate Carlisle archives, museum
Thursday, September 23, 2004
BY MATT MILLER
Of Our Carlisle Bureau
CARLISLE - To retired Brig. Gen. Joseph McCarthy, the Army's new Military History Institute is more than just an edifice of brick, concrete and glass.
It is a "milestone."
The institute, which sits beside Carlisle Barracks in what once was a Middlesex Twp. cornfield, is the first tangible piece of what eventually is to be a $100 million Army Heritage and Education Center museum complex.
State, federal, Army and local notables, including acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee and Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll, will dedicate the building during a 10 a.m. public ceremony tomorrow.
The rites will be filled with paratroopers, military music, historical re-enactors and even a little something for Elvis Presley fans.
"It's really very gratifying to see this come to realization," said McCarthy, a Middlesex resident and a prime mover behind the museum. "It's been a long haul, and it's going to be years before we complete the work."
The institute moved from a building at the main barracks.
It is being dedicated as Ridgway Hall to honor the late Gen. Matthew Ridgway, who led the 82nd Airborne Division during World War II and commanded U.S. and United Nations forces during the Korean War.
Tomorrow's rites will open with a demonstration by the 82nd Airborne's parachute team, whose members will land on the institute grounds along Army Heritage Drive and Interstate 81.
The institute is an inside-outside proposition.
Inside are a museum and a research center boasting millions of documents, books and photographs that trace the Army's history from Colonial times and include letters from buck privates as well as combat reports from such warriors as Gen. George S. Patton.
Most of that material -- which has been used by historians and filmmakers -- is accessible to the public.
"They just have to come in and register at the desk," said Col. Robert Dalessandro, Army Heritage and Education Center director.
Outside, workers are developing a historical trail complex that is to be laced with such exhibits as a World War II Sherman tank, a Vietnam-era Huey helicopter, Gatling guns, a slice of a Civil War battlefield, Revolutionary War redoubts and a World War I fighting trench.
"We'll also be saving some buildings from Fort Indiantown Gap to create a World War II company area, the kind of thing you'd have seen in the draft Army of the 1940s," Dalessandro said.
Those areas will host veterans' gatherings and living-history demonstrations starting next spring, he said.
MATT MILLER: 249-2006 or
mmiller@patriot-news.com