PROPER SALUTE
The National World War II Museum's newest complex to open to fanfare,
'40s style

Officials of the National World War II Museum announced details
Thursday for a three-day grand opening of the museum's newest phase: a
70,000-square-foot, $60 million complex where visitors can experience
the sights, sounds, tastes and feel of the way life was for American
soldiers on the battlefield and for their families back home.

The weekend celebration will begin Nov. 6 with a live broadcast on
NBC's "Today Show" of the ceremony dedicating the new facility, across
Andrew Higgins Drive from the original museum.

Host for the event will be NBC newsman Tom Brokaw, a longtime
supporter of the 9-year-old museum and author of "The Greatest
Generation," a book about the young Americans who fought the biggest
war in history. Among the speakers will be actor Tom Hanks, star of
the movie "Saving Private Ryan" and a passionate museum fundraiser

After the ceremony, which also will include a paratrooper dropping in
to deliver a proclamation from President Barack Obama, the public will
get its first glimpse of the gleaming new structure's offerings.

The complex, part of a $300 million expansion that will ultimately
double the size of the museum, will include an entertainment venue
called the Stage Door Canteen featuring the music and dance of the
swing era, as well as a family-friendly, '40s-style restaurant, The
American Sector, created by award-winning New Orleans chef John Besh.

The 250-seat Victory Theater will offer a 35-minute, $9 million movie
called "Beyond All Boundaries," which will provide an up-close,
multisensory experience of the war on a 125-foot-wide screen, with a
spectacular array of three-dimensional and virtual effects.

During the movie, life-size objects will rise from an 18-foot deep pit
in the floor and drop down from the theater's 75-foot ceiling. The
audience will be targeted in the searchlight of a Nazi concentration
camp's guard tower, and will feel the steamy heat of a tropical island
and the biting cold of the notorious winter of 1944.

An opening-day luncheon in the new complex will see celebrities and
dignitaries serving meals to 500 active-duty soldiers and World War II
veterans.

Nov. 7 has been set aside for a family festival in the style of the
1940s. That evening, there will be an event featuring dinner, live
music and dancing. The event will be open to the public but will
require tickets. Reservations and ticket information will be available
by late summer.

The final event of the weekend will be Nov. 8: a discussion billed as
the Stephen Ambrose retrospective, in honor of the late University of
New Orleans history professor and the museum's founder. The panel will
include World War II experts, among them celebrated historian Alan
Brinkley of Columbia University.