Batson-Cook Honor Bus Tour A Success

Staff Report From Columbus CEO

Friday, November 13th, 2015

Batson-Cook Construction’s annual Veterans Day “Honor Bus Tour” of the National Infantry Museum in Columbus proved to be especially poignant for one Korean War veteran in attendance, but every veteran on the tour said it was an experience they were grateful to have had.

A dozen Army and Navy veterans from as far back as the Korean War boarded a chartered coach in Smyrna, Georgia, for the day-long “Honor Bus Tour.”  The schedule included breakfast, a guided tour of the NIM, a buffet lunch and presentation about the construction of the museum, a movie about D-Day and the Normandy invasion, and a walk along World War II Street where an original chapel, barracks, mess hall, storage depot, and other base facilities from that era can be toured.

It was the visit to the NIM’s “Hall of Valor” display, however, that tugged most at the heartstrings of former Army Corporal Charlie Smith, the Korean War veteran from Smyrna.  Among the photos of the Army’s Congressional Medal of Honor winners as far back as the Civil War was one of Capt. Bobbie Brown, a family friend of Smith’s who earned his medal for actions during the Battle of Crucifix Hill near Aachen, Germany.  “It really touched my heart to see Bobbie’s heroism still being acknowledged in this way,” said Smith, noting that Brown passed away in 1971. 

Batson-Cook Construction of West Point, Georgia, began the now-annual “Honor Bus Tour” in 2009, the year in which it completed construction of the 190,000-square-foot museum dedicated to the U.S. Army Infantryman.  Since that time, some 300 veterans from areas in and around Columbus have participated in the event.  This was the seventh year of the tour, and veterans attending were primarily from the Smyrna area.

“Retired Major General Jerry White was in charge of the project for the National Infantry Foundation, and his passion for this project and honoring the infantryman rubbed off on all of us at Batson-Cook,” said Paul Meadows, general manager of the general contractor’s West Point office.  “We came to appreciate our veterans more than ever, and this annual tour is a great way to thank them for their service to our country.

“General White had a unique way of keeping us on schedule, too,” Meadows noted with a laugh.  “He’d say, ‘Every day this museum isn’t open means there are veterans who won’t have the opportunity to see it’,” Meadows said.  “We really didn’t want to get ourselves into a position of having to explain a delay to the general, so we stayed on schedule!”