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Rob Holmes, president and CEO of Texas Capital Bank; Charlotte Jones, chairman of the board of the National Medal of Honor Museum; Chris Cassidy, president and CEO of the National Medal of Honor Museum; and Col. Jack Jacobs, Medal of Honor recipient, speak at a roundtable discussion at The Crescent Hotel, Fort Worth. (Courtesy photo | National Medal of Honor Museum)
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The National Medal of Honor Museum, currently under construction in Arlington, is set to open in March 2025, but the project is already preparing to make an impact locally. 

Museum officials are reaching out to area schools to use the stories of Medal of Honor winners to teach about leadership and character, said Chris Cassidy, president and CEO of the museum.

“We hope to really refine what character-driven leadership means and what that will look like,” he said. 

Cassidy, a former Navy SEAL and NASA astronaut, was speaking at a Texas Capital Forum on Aug. 14 at The Crescent Hotel, Fort Worth. The forum was sponsored by Texas Capital Bank. 

“Our goal, our vision, is to convey to the United States of America the stories of courage and sacrifice and patriotism of ordinary people who, when the nation called on them, did something extraordinary,” Cassidy said. 

Cassidy said the education effort will begin locally with Arlington ISD and other districts in North Texas before spreading to other school districts around the country. Initially, the focus will be on seventh and eighth graders, with plans to expand to more grades in the future. 

The museum has added a Medal of Honor module to the NFL’s “Character Playbook,” a program for school students. The Medal of Honor component, used in more than 20,000 classrooms last year, focuses on the values of courage, commitment and integrity. 

Speaking along with Cassidy was Charlotte Jones, chairman of the board of directors for the museum and chief brand officer for the Dallas Cowboys, and Col. Jack Jacobs, a Medal of Honor recipient. 

The museum is working with its leadership institute to deliver programs through education, Jones said. There is a partnership and sponsorship from the NFL for that leadership training, she said. 

The 100,000-square-foot, $270 million museum is dedicated to telling the stories of America’s 3,519 recipients of the highest military decoration for valor in combat. President Abraham Lincoln created the Medal of Honor in 1863 in the midst of the Civil War. 

Beyond exhibits and outreach programs, museum officials also envision using artificial intelligence to connect with visitors. 

A virtual room will allow visitors to interview Jacobs about his Medal of Honor experience. 

“I’ve been asked all sorts of things, what my favorite ice cream is,” he said. 

Cassidy said the AI experience is one way to bring these stories to life. 

“We, the staff at the museum, have a side project to ask the AI a question every day, the crazier the better, because it makes the AI better,” he said. 

The National Medal of Honor Museum is under construction March 25, 2024, in the city’s Entertainment District. The museum is expected to open in March 2025. (Camilo Diaz | Fort Worth Report)

Jones said that when she was asked to chair the board for the museum, she was surprised that it did not already exist. 

“Many of you may be sitting here wondering the same thing, which is for our country’s greatest heroes, why hasn’t this been done already? And doesn’t something like this exist in Washington or someplace else? Why not? And that was our question,” she said. 

In 2019, the city of Arlington was competing against Denver to be the site for the museum. That only added to Jones’ desire to secure the museum here. 

“We’d never beaten Peyton Manning on the field, but we wanted to beat him here,” she said. Manning had been quarterback for the Denver Broncos and was also leading that city’s efforts to be named the location for the museum. 

As the countdown began to make the final decision, Jones told the decision committee that she was ready to make an announcement in the most Texas way possible: big and loud. 

“They said, ‘We’re trying to make our final decision, and we want to know where you are?’” she said. “And I said, ‘Look, we have a game on Sunday against the Green Bay Packers, and if you say yes on this phone call, President Bush and nine Medal of Honor recipients will be in the middle of that field, and we’re going to announce, live to the nation in front of 40 million people, on Fox Television.’”

The committee asked Jones if they could really do that. 

“Have you ever met anybody from Texas? Yes, we can do that. And off we went,” she said. 

Following the announcement, a donor in Colorado made a $20 million pledge. Other major donors include the Jones family; Lockheed Martin; BNSF Railway; philanthropists and business leaders Alan and Bonnie Petsche; and real estate developer John Goff and his wife, Cami Goff, who serves as executive vice president of the National Medal of Honor Museum board.

There will be more fundraising in the future for a Medal of Honor monument to be installed on the National Mall. President Joe Biden signed the legislation to make the monument possible in 2021. 

The museum and the monument will honor veterans like Jacobs, whose Medal of Honor stemmed from his service during the Vietnam War. 

On March 9, 1968, as he served in an advisory capacity to a battalion of South Vietnamese troops, they were ambushed. Jacobs said 75 men were killed or wounded in just the first few seconds of the attack. He was wounded, but ordered his men to form a defensive perimeter. According to his citation: “Capt. Jacobs made repeated trips across the fire-swept, open rice paddies, evacuating wounded and their weapons.”

“It’s a whole lot harder to wear the Medal than to earn it in the first place,” Jacobs said. “When you earn it, you’re just trying to survive.”

Jacobs said the Medal of Honor is a lot more than something that reflects on him. 

He was at a dinner once with other honorees when Gen. Jimmy Doolittle, a fellow Medal of Honor recipient, took him aside. 

“He said, ‘You’re no longer Jack Jacobs, you’re Jack Jacobs Medal of Honor recipient and you’d better comport yourself accordingly,’” Jacobs said. “I understood that. You are representing all those valiant people, whether they were recognized or not, who never came back. It’s a sweet burden, but it’s a burden.” 

The institution’s price tag is about $270 million, including operations costs, staffing costs and the architect costs — an increase from the initial projection of $150 million, he said. The museum still needs about $25 million more to completely fund the project.

 Bob Francis is business editor for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at bob.francis@fortworthreport.org. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.