COLUMBUS, Ohio — Step lightly between two facing mirrors at a first-of-its-kind museum honoring and celebrating the experiences of military veterans, and it takes your breath away. Behind and in front of you, as far as the eye can see, are folded flags.
You are standing midstream among the tidy triangles of past and future, the men and women who gave and will give their lives in service to the United States. This remembrance gallery is basked in sprays of color arranged on the windows, like stained glass, in the patterns of military service medals.
Developers of the $82 million, 53,000-square-foot National Veterans Museum and Memorial, which opened Saturday on Columbus’ downtown riverfront, seek to inspire and educate visitors with this and other inventive interactive displays.
It shows military families cleaved and reunited, it visually visits young recruits aboard military vessels, it tells love stories, it mourns wrenching losses. All this is done through state-of-the-art interactive graphics, shifting photo images, documentary-style videos, oral history interviews and other engaging approaches.