Those who have received a Medal of Honor will soon be recognized in a local museum set to open next year.
The new “Medal of Honor Museum” in Arlington has announced it will hold its grand opening on March 25, 2025, and its website now features a countdown clock to the auspicious moment. Visitors to the museum will be able to learn, honor, and recognize heroes who have served the nation, according to the museum’s website.
The 100,000-square-foot museum will sit on five acres in Arlington, with over 31,000 square feet of exhibition halls. It also will include spaces for meetings, symposiums, memorials, and ceremonies. The site will also serve as the headquarters for the National Medal of Honor Griffin Institute, which “explores and activates the stories, lessons, and values of Medal of Honor recipients through national and regional conferences, seminars, forums, team-building experiences, and immersive programs.”
In 2019, the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation announced that Arlington had been picked for the new site.
“By honoring these heroes, we hope to awaken the hero in us all,” Charlotte Jones, chairman, and Chris Cassidy, president and CEO of the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation, said, per the website. “Long before Medal of Honor recipients each earned their award, they were children, parents, neighbors, and friends. What made them heroes was not born on the battlefield but brought to it. It was not their circumstances that called them to sacrifice but their choices. They are not different from us, but they represent the best in us.”
President Biden signed a bill in 2021 that authorized the building of the museum in Arlington and a monument in Washington, D.C., as previously covered by DX.
The Medal of Honor is the United States’ highest award for military valor in action, according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. A total of 3,536 medals have been awarded, with 19 recipients receiving the award twice.
Texas has 76 Medal of Honor recipients, while New York has the largest number of recipients with 672.
Forty percent of all recipients received the honor during the American Civil War, fought between 1861 and 1865.
