“Our working figure right now for that museum space is $61 million, so that’s our initial target for fundraising for what will be a national fundraising campaign by our foundation partners,” Michael Visconage, the VA’s chief historian, said in a press conference in Dayton Tuesday.
The VA’s investment will be to prepare historic buildings and make them ready, he added.
The work will involve transforming the Putnam Library (building 120) into a public-facing research archive, with a museum and an archival and artifact storage facility, as well as an education center, among other sites.
Tanya Bradsher, an Iraq War veteran confirmed to the job of VA deputy secretary last September, visited the 450-acre Dayton VA campus for the first time Tuesday, coming away impressed by what she saw. She witnessed a scanner scanning printed and physical materials for inclusion in the center’s eventual collection.
“It’s really an amazing piece of equipment that we have here,” Bradsher said.
Dayton was chosen for the center and VA records archive based on available space, bolstered by community and political support for the project, Visconage said.
“Our goal at the VA is to be able to tell the VA’s story,” Bradsher said. “We are the backbone of taking care of veterans for over a hundred years.”
Dayton is a hotbed of VA history, with the campus southwest of Third Street and Gettysburg Avenue founded as one of the first three branches of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers to serve Union Civil War Veterans.
One of the many historic buildings on the campus includes an 1870 Protestant Chapel. Veterans have been receiving care on the campus for 157 years, and the national cemetery nearby has existed since 1867, said Jennifer DeFrancesco, the director of the Dayton VA Medical Center.
“One of the great things about Dayton is we have the new and the old, and being able to connect those,” said Bradsher, a fourth-generation veteran and Iraq combat veteran who retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel.
Bradsher is the 10th deputy secretary and the highest ranking woman in the VA’s history.
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