“Rather than retelling the military and political history of each conflict, Answering the Call focuses on the individuals who became involved,” stated Charlie Knight, curator of military history at the museum. “Seeing how everyday people got caught up in major national and world events provides a much more human connection between museum visitors and the past. The conflicts and time periods in large part are simply a backdrop—the people take center stage.”
“The goal is to make this exhibit more than just guns and places on a map,” Knight continued. “We worked to put a human face—a North Carolina face—to our military story. These efforts may have taken the form of a short biographical panel, a video with actors retelling a person’s story, or audio clips of veterans themselves recounting their experience.