Milwaukee PBS Specials

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Funding for, "A Hallowed Home for Heroes," is provided, in part, by the following underwriters: the Greater Milwaukee Foundation's Ernest C. and Florence M. Shocke Fund, and by The Keeland Fund.

(somber music) - [Helen] Two of us on this row, and two of you go down that row.

- [Don] We'll follow you.

- [Lois] This way?

(somber music) - "Thus blessed we live and die in an air hung with their prayers, the breath of their words on our faces and bodies, their spirits among us, trying to see and hear and understand what is it we think, and I wonder, we ponder this all of our lives, not realizing what we already know."

And mom and dad loved each other.

Yeah.

- I feel like crying, but not in front of the camera.

I mean, you know, not crying from sadness, just from honoring what...

I mean, we're standing here.

We have not stood here this way and talked, and it's really something to be...

It's a legacy that we've held onto.

This place is such a powerful presence.

- Well growing up, when you're a kid, you don't have any clue about any of this.

- [Don] The idea of both of them living here, this is where he wanted to be.

This is where he lived.

- [Helen] Well we've made it, guys.

A family reunion.

- [James] This is where they all lived, starting in 1958.

Don, Helen, Lois and Phyllis Tubesing, along with their mother, Myrtle, and father, Karl, an army colonel and chaplain for the Veterans Administration.

Their home was on the national historic grounds of what is now known as Milwaukee Soldiers' Home, next to Wood National Cemetery.

The Tubesings moved into Building 11, the old fire engine house, where they could see the Victorian gothic tower of Old Main, where veterans lived.

- [Lois] The reason we moved here was because we lived in Brookfield on Calhoun Road and if he got called in the middle of the night, it was a half an hour drive here before the freeway and a half an hour back.

And that was a huge chunk.

- [Don] Dad had been the longest serving chaplain.

- [Lois] You just think about all of the people that he touched over time.

You could be downstairs with someone that you wanted to be with, and you'd hear the phone and you'd hear him clumping down the stairs, 'cause he had to go to the hospital in the middle of the night.

Night after night after night.

- [James] While the Tubesings grew to revere the Soldiers' Home district and Old Main, so many others traveling the highway, or walking to a ball game, still have no idea what it is, or who it serves.

- I think the Soldiers' Home is the most visible and the least recognized building, probably in Milwaukee.

And I think if people think of it at all, it's the somewhat mysterious, you know, kind of haunted-ish sort of mansion up there on the hill.

- First of all, it's a huge surprise if I tell anybody this is where I lived, but also they don't know much about it.

- [James] For the Tubesings, and thousands of veterans and their families, this is hallowed ground.

In April of 1867, following the Civil War, the federal government bought 400 acres on the west side of Milwaukee from local businessman Alexander Mitchell.

It would become a peaceful place for wounded and disabled veterans to rest and heal.

It was originally known as the Northwestern Branch of the National Asylum for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers.

But Congress later changed it from asylum to home, to better reflect its purpose.

By 1869, Old Main opened its doors to the first union soldiers.

- Old Main symbolizes an important step in the development of Milwaukee as a city.

If you look at the development as people are moving west in the period right around the decades right before and right after the Civil War, Milwaukee is growing by leaps and bounds.

And that's a huge moment for Milwaukee.

It's one of those very symbolic moments.

Very similar in some ways to, you know, when a Major League team comes to town, or you get a major Fortune 500 company that shows up and decides to headquarter there.

- So it certainly was an employer of a lot of Milwaukeeans, and an economic stimulus for Milwaukee as well.

There were 3,000 soldiers here in the later 1800s.

So you've got this village, you know, kind of on the western outskirts of Milwaukee that needed to be supplied with food, beverages, there was a beer hall on the grounds, and certainly there was an awful lot of contractors who were necessary to keep this thing going.

(gentle music) - [James] Over time, the area became an expansive district with its own zip code, and an administrative leader, or governor.

Today the grounds are down to 90 acres, with 29 buildings, including the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center, which opened in 1966.

Milwaukee Soldiers' Home is one of only three original soldiers' homes in the nation, and remains the most intact.

The other two are in Togus, Maine and Dayton, Ohio.

Still standing tall is Milwaukee's Old Main, now restored and housing veterans who are at risk for homelessness.

- And I was homeless for 14 years before coming in here.

And this place, when I first seen my apartment, I cried.

I love it.

I love my place.

I love my little house.

I call it my little foxhole.

(Linda chuckling) - I thought, "Soldiers' Home, that's for me."

- I wanted to live here because it's a great honor for me.

It is something that is beyond just living here.

The whole perspective of being here is sometimes overwhelming for me because I can't believe that I'm here.

I can't believe that I'm actually in this hallowed building.

(gentle music) (gentle music) - [Helen] Wow.

Wow.

To look at what this place looked like and how it looks now, it's really unbelievable.

This is a piece of history.

- [Jonathan] And I thought, "The place looks like a shambles."

- [James] In 1989, the Veterans Administration, now the Department of Veterans Affairs, faced a dilemma.

Old Main was too deteriorated to keep open, too costly to renovate, but also too historic to tear down.

So the VA just locked the doors and the residence stood vacant for nearly 30 years.

- Oh, it's scary.

You know, it was somewhat of a tragedy in that it had devolved to that state.

And it's unfortunate that funding wasn't available to maintain or restore the facility throughout the many years - Personally it was sad to see, you know, it get to that point.

I remember Old Main smelled particularly bad.

You would have to have masks to go into the buildings because of a lot of the deterioration, the lead paint.

We would bring in potential donors, potential funders, and you really have to lay out the vision for them because it's hard to see how it could ever come back to life again.

- You know, we talk about the 30 years that it had been unoccupied, but I think the neglect went even farther back than that.

But when you would initially come in you could almost feel the soul of the building that it was still there from what it originally was.

But it was also almost like a haunted building.

- The Department of Veterans Affairs' number one mission to care for veterans.

So they're focused primarily on traumatic brain injury, PTSD, and historic architecture wasn't quite on the top of their list.

- [James] The decay of Old Main was once described by a local preservationist as, "Demolition by neglect."

- That is pretty much a commonly used term, and unfortunately for many federal buildings where funds are not made available by, or to either maintain or restore buildings, unfortunately, that is what happens.

- [James] "Demolition by neglect," a phrase the founders of Milwaukee Soldiers' Home would've thought unimaginable.

- There were women who made it happen in Milwaukee, thank you very much.

- [James] The women she's talking about include Lydia Ely Hewitt, Fannie Burling Buttrick, and Hannah Vedder, who led a volunteer group of young women taking care of soldiers in temporary storefronts.

- The story of the Soldiers' Home in Milwaukee starts with the women of Milwaukee who had been taking care of soldiers for a couple of years before this place was created.

All over Wisconsin, all over the north, soldiers aid societies had sprung up, pretty much as soon as the war began.

They were very decentralized, very localized, they gathered kind of the typical like food to send to the army, lint you always... You picked lint, then you packed it, that was to put around wounds, and bandages.

- [James] Perhaps more than any other woman, it was Lydia Ely Hewitt who led the charge and often gave passionate pleas for long-term veteran care.

- [Lydia] These men are gonna need more than just a few nights sleep and a hot meal, they're going to need rehabilitation training, they're going to need to find a purpose that they can take with them to get through the horrors of war.

- And in Milwaukee the kind of leading organization was the West Side Soldier's Aid Society.

And they became kind of the central outfit, you know, in Wisconsin.

By 1864, they had come to realize that by that time there were soldiers coming home who are disabled by wounds, or illness especially.

They don't have a place to go.

They need either a few nights lodging, or longer term.

And so downtown, just south of Wisconsin Avenue, on what's now Plankington, well it was called West Water Street then, they had a home, a Soldiers' Home.

- [Lydia] They have made the ultimate sacrifice to us, and we need to do everything within our power to try to care for them.

- Indeed.

They have fought to keep this country united.

- At the time that these women were doing it, women could not serve.

And so this was their way to serve.

Well the women that were in charge of it had that strong business sensibility, they had strong project management sensibility.

- [James] The women were ahead of what was about to happen in Washington DC.

On March 4th, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln, in his second inaugural address, called on the nation to build a Soldiers' Home system across the country for the care of veterans.

(gentle music) - At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first.

Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have born the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

- [James] As one of his last acts before being assassinated, President Lincoln signed the legislation to create these national homes.

Something the women of the West Side Soldier's Aid Society were already planning on doing.

They plotted their plans on board a train ride back home from Chicago.

- Our boys are coming back maimed, crippled, helpless for life.

As members of the West Side Soldier's Aid Society we must build them a permanent home of magnificent proportions for which we don't even have marble white enough.

- Their story then blends into the larger story of creating a national system of soldiers' homes.

I mean, they had every intent of building their own home, kind of out west of town, as this is.

And so they decided to raise money for that.

And that's the Soldiers' Home Fair.

- This is going to be a fair for the ages.

It's just amazing how people are backing us.

And I think that we are going to be able to put on a program and give them things the likes of which they've never seen before.

- [James] The fair opened on June 28th, 1865.

It was originally scheduled for a 10 day run, but it stretched until mid-July in what is now downtown Milwaukee.

Renowned local architect Edward Townsend Mix designed the main fair structure.

It was not unlike today's state fair, according to a firsthand account by a young woman from Waupun, Wisconsin.

She wrote... - [Fairgoer] We observe, stretching across the street, a piece of canvas on which are the words, "Soldiers of the union, welcome home."

And directly we are at the building appropriated to the fair.

Presenting our tickets at the door we enter the main hall and are nearly bewildered by the beauty of the scene before us.

Festoons of evergreens are suspended from the arch, and the walls and the base of the gallery are ornamented with evergreens.

Near the rear of the hall, forming an arch, are the words, "The only national debt which we can never repay is the debt we owe to our brave union soldiers."

The band is playing, battle flags waving, flowers and evergreens mingling their colors with the soft hues of the fancy articles suspended from the wall.

The pictures illuminated by the gaslight and the crowds of gaily dressed, happy looking people almost gives one to think himself in fairyland.

And for a moment we imagine it all a dream.

We want to see Old Abe, of course.

Here he sits upon his perch, seemingly conscious of his importance as the hero of the eighth regiment.

He is a noble looking fellow, and I wonder not that the rebels were anxious to capture him.

- [James] Fairgoers cashed in on Old Abe's popularity by buying a picture card of the bald eagle that he would sometimes sign, with a scratch using his beak or talons.

That souvenir helped the Soldiers' Home Fair become the largest charitable effort undertaken by Wisconsin citizens in the Civil War era.

In the end, the grand total raised was over $110,000, which is a little more than $2 million in today's currency.

The majority from the fair itself, in addition to contributions from across the state.

- We were so successful.

I never dreamed that we could raise that much money.

$110,000.

- I don't even know what that would look like.

- Our storefront has done so well, but we're just overwhelmed with soldiers coming back.

We need to build, to get going on that home, for them to live in permanently.

- So our West Side Soldier's Aid Society moves to the next step, a permanent home for these heroes.

- [James] Shortly after Lincoln's call to build a national soldiers' home system, the federal government began looking for locations.

That's when the wealthy husbands of these women, including Alexander Mitchell, John Plankinton, and George H. Walker, went to Washington, touting the money their wives had raised, and persuaded officials to build one of the first soldiers' homes in Milwaukee.

- They had to give up some control in order to get the whole national, and the funding and stuff, which they did, but not very willingly, I think.

- My sense of it is that without the $100,000 the women raised at the Soldiers' Home Fair, without their willingness to give that up, and there is a debate back and forth.

They have to be talked into it, and they kind of grudgingly go along with it.

And that becomes, apparently, the final sort of, they check off a box.

Okay, here's a lot of money, the land is gonna be there anyway, it's Mitchell land.

And so I don't know that it happens here without them.

And my sense is that they were planning this being a soldiers' home for Wisconsin veterans.

(gentle music) - [James] When it was finally built, the soldiers' home welcomed veterans from all over the country.

They also enjoyed the calming environment of the grounds, as did the public.

As many as 300,000 visitors came each year to enjoy the lakes, greenhouses and gardens.

- I love that idea about people coming on the trolley here when it was first started and having their picnics on the ground.

- In terms of recreation, you have to sort of see the soldiers' home in context.

Back in 1889, which was the year Milwaukee began to develop parks on sort of a larger scale, the entire city had 125 acres of green space.

Everything, every scrap of green space.

The soldiers' home had 410 acres, so it was close to four times the size of the entire park system.

So you have these manicured grounds, you have these scenic carriageways, you have, you know, lakes developing and nice architecture.

So this became a real magnet for Milwaukeeans who were kind of wanted to see something that was semi-rural, but also finished at the same time.

So there were, you know, some of the swells on Grand Avenue, the affluent families, Henry Harnischfeger would ride his horse out here from 35th and Wisconsin every morning.

(gentle music) - [James] Years later, veterans living at the Soldiers' Home took advantage of another recreational opportunity involving their next door neighbor.

- [Announcer] Hank Aaron steps in against the third Cardinal pitcher of the game, Billy Moffitt.

Here it comes.

And there it goes.

Hammering Hank hits a home run, and this one is special.

The Braves... - My dad took me to County Stadium, and you could see the bleachers on the hillside from over the rightfield fence of, you know, County Stadium.

I asked my dad, "Who are those guys?"

And he told me that they were veterans of the First World War, Second World War, and some of them were actually from the Spanish-American War.

So that was my first knowledge of the place.

- Well I got a job here at the stadium, Milwaukee County Stadium, in August of '77, and I came down here and I couldn't help but see Old Main off in the distance.

And it was always an interesting place to come on our free time.

Sometimes after we got our work done, or on our lunch period, we'd go walk over and take a look over at Old Main and get a better glimpse of it.

And I would always see Old Main rising above the trees, which was kind of a beautiful sight.

- [James] It was in the 1970s when Milwaukee County Stadium expanded and that view from Mockingbird Hill, along with the bleachers, disappeared.

Eventually changes also came to the Soldiers' Home, including to Building 11, the old fire engine house turned Tubesing home.

Now it's a treatment facility for veterans.

But fond memories of the home remain.

- The fence was not there.

So this was a main thorough through for all of those old soldiers.

They literally walked right past our back door there and this way, and the road wasn't here, it was here.

But we literally lived right in the middle of it.

- Yeah, we never used the back door except to put out the garbage.

- Uh-huh.

- Yeah, because there were always guys walking back and forth.

- [Lois] Yep, still there.

- [Helen] But there's a shower.

- [Lois] Oh, a shower?

Yeah, we didn't have a... - [Helen] No.

- Oh.

- Oh, how nice.

- It is nice, but it isn't- - Very different.

Wasn't the door over there?

- Yeah, the door was over there.

- This is where we sat every Thanksgiving at the dining room table.

And the Packers played the Lions, and by halftime the Lions would be ahead and it would ruin the Thanksgiving meal.

- [Helen] Oh, and the radiator was right there.

I would sit on the radiator.

- Did they take away my radiator?

I gotta know.

- We used to sit on that.

- I know.

- To be warm.

Boy, this looks smaller.

- [Lois] So Phyllis, your twin bed was there.

My twin bed was here.

- [Phyllis] Our desks were here.

- [Lois] Two desks.

And the... - [Phyllis] A little tiny closet.

- [Lois] I know, only big enough for cowboy boots.

- This stairway my dad cut a hole in the ceiling.

I think it was there, and there was a pull down.

- No.

- No?

- No, it was illegal, he didn't get permission.

The chaplain.

And he cut a hole in the ceiling, 'cause we needed room, and he floored the attic.

- He built this.

- And then this was a pull down stair.

- So there was a rope and it would pull down and go back up.

It was totally illegal.

I don't suppose they can toss- - But it was totally cool.

I mean, his design of doing it.

- Oh, yeah, he knew what he was doing.

But it was- - It just was government property.

- Yeah.

- It was the only sin he ever committed.

Oh, maybe not.

- Maybe not, who knows?

(gentle music) - [James] Even bigger changes came to the Soldiers' Home a few years into the 21st century when a project manager for a Madison based real estate developer, specializing in historic preservation, stepped foot on the grounds.

- So in 2004, that was my first time out at the campus.

And it wasn't until 2010, when the roof on Old Main collapsed, and there was a lot of interest in the preservation community to see the buildings reused.

At that point the Community Advisory Council was created that, as an employee of The Alexander Company, I sat on with a number of preservationists, and architects, and veterans to start coming up with a plan to reuse the buildings.

- [James] In June of 2011, the Soldiers' Home Historic District was designated as a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service.

It quickly found a spot on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 11 most endangered historic places.

That galvanized community groups, local, state and federal stakeholders, to launch a plan to save six of the district's vacant structures: an administrative building, the Catholic chaplain's quarters, three duplexes, and, of course, Old Main.

All restored to provide a total of 101 housing units for veterans.

- [Chris] What they did to the place, it's just amazing.

- What made this place so special is who it's serving, the veterans, the United States, and why this entire campus was created, being one of the original three soldiers' homes, and to be put back into the service is very unique.

- And, you know, there are times, if you look at some of the old pictures of the building, some of the pictures, for instance, in the dining facility where you had a large number of veterans eating there, you can almost place yourself in that moment, in that time.

It's a place of soldiers, and that's very close to my heart.

I spent 20 years in the Army, two combat tours, and the connection that I have there is very strong.

And there are places, both buildings and locations, where you're just brought back to those times.

My time I spent in Europe, had the opportunity to go to the battlegrounds in Normandy, and it was, it was somewhat of the same feeling.

- When I walked through Old Main I felt tremendous awe.

And the reason that I felt that was because you could feel a presence in the walls of all the generations before.

And walking through, knowing the history, even if you don't know the history in detail, you walk through and you get a sense of what was there before.

It's almost as if the old veterans, the ghosts of the old veterans, are looking at you and watching you, and also encouraging you.

And that is... To me, that's something special.

- It's almost like a unicorn type of a project.

It's not an adaptive reuse into a new type of idea, this building and set of buildings was meant for veterans and it is continued to be used by veterans today.

And that's almost kind of rare in the historic preservation field.

- [James] Funding for the $44 million phase one restoration project came from multiple donors, companies, and organizations.

- [Jonathan] There's about 13 layers of financing in that.

That included the federal low income housing tax credit, and then we also did a capital campaign with 600 individuals and companies that gave through the Greater Milwaukee Foundation and Milwaukee Preservation Alliance.

- [James] The original architectural features in Old Main have been preserved to bring the past and present together, as a way of paying respect to what these grounds and buildings symbolize.

- How these federal programs, and the state of Wisconsin Historic Tax Credit Program works is you try to save as much historic character within these buildings.

And that's expensive.

It takes a lot of manpower in order to do that.

So it's very skilled work.

If these unique architectural details are there, they wanna see them saved.

They wanna see the slate roofs.

And we wanna see the windows restored, the wood floors, the plaster walls, the molding.

Everything that really gives it the historic appeal we try to save.

- [James] The restoration of the six buildings began in 2019 and finished in 2021.

The US Department of Veterans Affairs leased the properties for 75 years to a partnership between The Alexander Company, which also led the fundraising and construction efforts, and Milwaukee's Housing Authority.

The Milwaukee Soldiers' Home contains some of the oldest and intact buildings in the VA system, which grew to 14 institutions by 1930.

Old Main is the only original Soldiers' Home building in the country, designed to combine multiple basic veteran care functions under one roof.

- The VA is providing case management for each of the veterans.

So there are six case managers at Old Main for the 101 residents currently living on the project.

So they provide everything from financial literacy to, you know, job support, sobriety support.

It's so helpful to have them actually on site where you're not gonna get that on another housing project that's not on a VA campus like this.

- It touches me emotionally that the whole complex was built by a community in Milwaukee, and Wisconsin is very much a veteran centric community that all of this was built to care for veterans.

Many of those veterans, the people who were building it, they didn't know who they were, but they cared enough to provide this healing space for them.

- War is hell but coming home is harder.

For some people, of course.

But when I came home, it didn't seem like home.

It seemed like I was...

I wasn't connecting with anybody.

And whether living in a place like this is helpful.

I mean, it keeps 'em off the streets and it provides some security.

And then there are services that are helpful as well.

- Thank you very much.

(gentle music) So this is my apartment and I do have ghosts.

They don't like that mask, I straightened it out four times and all four times they just twisted it that way.

This is a brick from the Steam Building.

It's what it was called, Steam Building.

Before I came to live here, I wouldn't last long wherever I'd go to live.

I would be not only fighting to survive wherever I was, but I would be fighting my own demons.

I would be fighting everyday things, every weekly things, every monthly things, you know, food, and all that.

So basically here the support system is what has kept me going.

- I'm proud of being a Milwaukee resident, and I was proud of serving, and I was proud of what we had here on the VA grounds, even though I didn't really know a lot of it, or, you know, knowing all the buildings.

And I thought Soldiers' Home, that's for me.

- Well it does feel like home.

This is a wonderful area, and I love the greenery.

I love the trees and all that.

- When I'm treated with disrespect and discrimination, that's hurtful.

Very hurtful.

And I don't have any of it going on here.

None of these people are like that here.

They're very helpful and very friendly.

God smiled at me and guided me to a good home, a good place that I can make a home for me and my cat.

- The way the rent is figured out, it is 30% of your income.

The bills are included, the utilities, you don't have to be out there sweeping the floors outside your apartment or whatever.

Everything was brand new when I came into my apartment, from microwave, stove, all of that.

So yeah, it's a great deal if you're a veteran.

And if you're in crisis, it's a great deal.

- So the veterans that are living on the Soldier Home grounds again, they're all honorably discharged veterans.

They're veterans and they can't have any criminal activity.

If they have no income, they pay nothing.

They're not turned away.

But if they are earning, they have to contribute also to the overall management and keeping the lights on.

HUD then, through the VASH vouchers, will make up that difference.

So that's how we end up paying the expenses of the property, of what it costs to maintain.

- From the very beginning the goal was always to get these buildings put back into the service of veterans, 'cause that's what they were built for originally.

- I mean, anybody that's come to this campus in Milwaukee, and sees not only these buildings, this magnificent sort of storybook, you know, between the cottages and Old Main it feels like you're in a movie set.

Before you get to the main VA. - [James] When Yvette Pino was the curator of veteran art at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, it was her job to decorate the walls of Old Main with meaningful artwork.

(upbeat music) - Right here we have three original paintings by Jim Finnerty.

He became a painter long after service.

He's one of those artists that wasn't necessarily a painter before.

His work became very abstract, and it's that abstract quality that really drew people's attention to his work.

When we were thinking about the images to put up, we wanted to remind ourselves, and the people that enter this building, that this is somebody's home, it's not your standard government installation, or military institution.

This is where the veterans come to relax and spend their time at home.

This photo is by John Adams, he's an army veteran, Wisconsin veteran, worked for the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs.

John was a photographer, and if you're a Wisconsin veteran, chances are you knew who John Adams was.

And this photograph is from a Civil War era building and it's the reflection.

And he loved this photo.

John unfortunately died of pancreatic cancer and he was able to deliver this to me a few weeks before he died and donated it to the Soldiers' Home.

The entire time we were planning this, and installing the artwork, I kept saying, "I wanna live here.

I wish I could live here.

This would be amazing."

I love looking at the Jeanette Kappas portrait here, because when you think about the WASP pilots, so the women pilots in World War II, they weren't allowed to photograph where they were at.

So her collection is copied representation of the official photographs that were being taken.

And the photo itself is only about this big.

And when we were reproducing it to go large scale, I really wanted her to have this balanced presence.

There's the John Winter photograph on the opposite end of this room.

And I just love that it's Jeanette Kappas, it's a really strong female representation, but she's also standing in the snow, like knee deep snow in front of her plane, and that's like so Wisconsin too.

One of the things I've always done in my practice as an artist, and as a curator, is I've presented artwork that tells the military experience.

And it's always offered this bridge for people to have conversation.

So you can share that story without having to maybe dig into something of your own personal story you're not ready to share, but you can give that understanding through imagery on a wall.

- [James] There's another type of imagery on the walls that the soldiers living in Old Main created, in a place that you might not expect.

- [Jonathan] The etchings that are up in the tower, guys used to sneak up there.

So from the 1940s, 1970s, 1990, '84.

They used to, you know, put their initials, they used to carve, you know, what division they were in, and they go back, because, that tower, everybody wants to see what's up in there.

- [James] While history has been preserved in Old Main, and other buildings, there's a sense that there's still work to be done.

- It's really, everyone can get behind, you know, saving these beautiful buildings that are serving veterans.

And after seeing how successful this first phase was, I feel like that was the bigger lift and now getting the rest of these buildings saved and restored, I think it's just kind of a matter of, you know, maybe it doesn't always go as quickly as we'd like, but I think that once we get there, it's gonna be a really special project.

- I've always thought that this is a special project.

The Alexander Company knows it, I've known it since I first stepped onto the campus.

There are a lot of individuals working to make sure that these other buildings are also safeguarded and that a plan is put into place.

- I think the renovation needs to be finished because when you have a jewel this intact in the heart of your city, save it.

Just save it.

You've got an ensemble here that is unusually complete and losing any one of the elements I think compromises the integrity of the whole.

- That's almost a natural, that's almost a given.

Not finishing the campus, you do lose some integrity.

- Well I'm very much an advocate for the Soldier Home and all of the buildings that surround it.

- [Producer] So what are we waiting for?

- Oh, we're the federal government, we don't really do anything quick.

I think there are a few more legal hurdles that we need to make sure that we get through and that everybody is set for us to go forward.

- This is for veterans, it was always meant for veterans and continues into the future.

(gentle music) You know, I would love to see the theater open its doors again as a theater.

(gentle music) - [Don] This is just incredible.

This should be restored (gentle music) - [Lois] I think, Don, I remember you and I sort of roaming around in there, climbing over things, going up into the boxes.

- [Don] Well and they didn't use it as much either then, they had regular movies.

They had lots of posters around in there.

It's really a gorgeous theater.

I saw an Elvis Presley movie in there, when Elvis was in the army or something.

- [Helen] Oh, I bet.

(gentle music) - [Jonathan] I would love to see the chapel to be a place of healing.

(gentle music) - [Helen] Well, it didn't look like this.

54 years ago I was married here.

(gentle music) - [Don] It's really quite a big, there's two rows of pews with a center aisle.

And up on this side there's a big old organ and then the altar.

- [Helen] But it's an electric organ, which is why Lois wasn't married here.

- Oh.

- 'Cause she's musical and she needed a church that had a big pipe organ.

Otherwise the other, the three of us were married here.

- [Don] Well, dad's funeral service was here.

- Yeah.

- In '83.

And it was almost packed.

- I would love to see the governor's mansion to be used for more supportive services in order to supplement and compliment what the VA is currently doing on this great campus.

- [Phyllis] This should be restored, 'cause it's a beautiful building.

- [Lois] You know, sometimes you should just do that.

Just save things 'cause it's important.

(gentle music) - Anything that they have to do with the second part of the renovation, sign me up, I'll be supportive in any way I can.

- I think it's important to renovate these places.

The fact that these buildings have withstood time is something to be admired.

I mean, these buildings, after the Civil War, and they're still here standing.

I mean, that is something incredible.

- Just being here again the memories are so strong, but they're more than that.

It really is the reaffirmation of the values that we were taught by our parents and in this situation and dad's ministry to veterans and mom's participation in that.

This is an important part of our history.

If people walk through here I can't imagine them not being moved by the background of our country and the service that people have given.

- It's a national treasure.

- Wisconsin veterans went through these buildings, they lived in these buildings, they died here.

You know, we have to preserve that, honor that, and we have to feel privileged to have it.

Otherwise, what kind of Americans are we?

(somber music) - It's a beautiful building, and you look at it from outside and you can tell there's a lot of history in this building.

Sometimes you can even feel it.

And that to me, it means I'm a part of this now.

I live here.

I wanna make this my home.

I told my son when I first moved in here, I told him, "I finally found somewhere to pass away."

- I never served in the military, and I think that when this opportunity came about I took it just as serious, you know, on this more than anything that I've ever worked on.

And so I always considered this to be a real honor, to be even be able to do this work.

So that means quite a lot.

- Everyday Milwaukeeans should care about this place simply because the person next to you could be a veteran, the person next to you could be in need of something that you're unaware of.

And I think as veterans sit up in the big, I call 'em the turret rooms, with the beautiful floor to ceiling glass, reflective rooms that look out at the baseball park.

They're looking toward the baseball park and the baseball park's looking in and I think for me it's that reminder of we all live together, and we all exist together, and we all deserve a home.

- If we didn't have Old Main, this city, this country would be diminished.

First of all, the city would lose an important part of its history.

This country would also have broken a promise that it made to veterans.

- It's still needed by those people who have given to all the rest of us as citizens.

A real job well done.

- [James] A job well done, a phrase President Lincoln would most likely agree with.

And so would those whose passion and gratitude continue to live and rest at this hallowed home for heroes.

(gentle music) - With malice toward none.

- With charity for all.

- With firmness in the right.

- As God gives us to see the right.

- Let us strive to finish the work we are in.

- To bind up the nation's wounds.

To bind up the nation's wounds.

- To care for him who shall have borne the battle.

- And for his widow, and his orphan.

- To do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Funding for, "A Hallowed Home for Heroes," is provided in part by the following underwriters: the Greater Milwaukee Foundation's Ernest C. and Florence M. Shocke Fund and by The Keeland Fund.

(gentle music)