Look Who's Talking...Gordon 'Nick' Mueller

Nick Mueller, 63, has spent more than three decades teaching history in New Orleans, first as a professor and vice chancellor at the University of New Orleans and now as president of the National D-Day Museum.

Throughout the 1990s, Mueller juggled teaching and administrative responsibilities

You've been on the board of directors at the D-Day Museum since the beginning but you've recently had a change in your job title.

I've actually been president of the museum since the summer of 2000. What's changed is that I'm no longer splitting my time between UNO and the museum. With the expansion that we're planning across the street we're going to be doubling our current museum space. We'll be raising $80 million over several years. It seemed to me and some of the members of the board that it would be extremely difficult for me to continue doing both jobs with all of the attention that the museum project is going to need. Now I'm off on a more complete commitment to this institution. It's a four-year commitment.

Will those four years take us through to the completion of the expansion.

We're hoping it will only take four to five years, but it could be seven or eight years. It will really be a function of money. If we had all of the money right now I'd say we could have it finished in three or four years without any problem. But the fact is we only have about $20 million of the necessary $80 million.

What are some features that will likely be included in the expansion?

There are several major elements. We have gradually expanded the mission of the museum from first just the Normandy invasion to all of the D-Day invasions of World War II, and now, at another level, we are committed to being America's only World War II museum. So that means we have some more theaters of the war that we have not covered. We have not looked at the campaigns in North Africa, Sicily or Southern France. We haven't done a whole lot on the major events after the invasion of Normandy like the Battle of the Bulge. We're definitely committed to doing the theater of China, Burma and India. One element across the street is the invasions, but we also want to do more thematic approaches to looking at the war showcasing things like women in World War II or African Americans. There are a number of these thematic approaches that we can play with.

The head of the Disney Imagineers was involved in our planning sessions, as well as the Smithsonian, a number of prominent World War II historians and several other military museum directors. They all gathered here at the end of May for three days and we just brainstormed about what we're going to do over there. We have three main elements: exhibits, the Center for the Study of the American Spirit which will be an educational research center, and a World War II multimedia cinematic experience - perhaps a virtual reality experience like what it's like to come ashore in a Higgins boat or what it's like to be in a dogfight in a Spitfire.

Now do you see the museum contributed to the New Orleans economy.

I think there's no doubt that from an economic development point we know that we're having a huge impact in terms of visitor attraction. Out of 340,000 visitors, our marketing studies say 82% come from outside New Orleans. Of that 82%, 29% say their No. 1 reason for coming to the city was die museum. That's 100,000 people each year that come here just for this museum. You're talking about nights in hotels, you're talking about restaurants - the entire ripple effect of all of this.

What effect, if any did the ecent controversy surounding Stephen Ambrose's books have on the museum?

Not a bit. In fact, most of the museum goers that come here and the World War II veterans say they all sympathize with Steve Ambrose. And recently, major journalists like David Gergen and others have really come out in his defense. There's also been one prominent historian who wrote an analysis of the whole thing saying really what Steve has done was not plagiarism, and pointing out the wonderful, positive things that he has done to revive and awaken American's interest in their history. Steve helps us look at history in a way we never thought of before. That's his testament.