New exhibit at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum features stories of service

In honor of the 250th anniversary of the Army, Navy, and Marines this year, the Wisconsin Veterans Museum has opened its newest exhibit, “Traditions: Stories of Service to Country & Community.” 

The show, which opened on March 14, highlights the achievements of over a dozen Wisconsin armed services members from the Civil War era to today, focusing on stories of events that took place during their service and their continued contributions to their communities. 

Jennifer Stevenson, the marketing manager for the Madison museum, told the Wisconsin Independent about the Rev. Ray Stubbe of Wauwatosa. Stubbe, who had joined the Naval Reserve during his senior year in high school, studied for the ministry and joined a Naval Reserve chaplain company while still in seminary. He was ordained as a Lutheran minister in 1965. The next year, while enrolled in graduate school in Chicago, Stubbe responded to a call for naval chaplains. 

“They were asking for chaplains, and I thought, well, having been enlisted, I just felt a kinship there. I just felt a need — I guess you could call it a calling. I had that inner sense that that’s where I should be. I saw articles in Life

magazine. I saw pictures of POWs, and it really affected me,” Stubbe said in an oral history interview posted on the museum’s website. 

Stubbe served with the 3rd Marine Division during the Vietnam War and delivered sermons while under fire.  

The boots Stubbe wore, preserved with the red mud that clung to them during the Battle of Khe Sanh, are on display in the exhibit. 

“We had them conserved so that the mud would stay on,” Stevenson said. “They’re just very powerful testaments to the trials and tribulations that someone would have gone through in that era.”

Stevenson said that beyond Stubbe’s service as a chaplain, he dedicated his life afterward to telling the stories of the men who fought at Khe Sanh and donated photos and journals to the museum. 

After his service, Stubbe returned to his home state and founded the Khe Sanh Veterans Association.

“When you think about Wisconsin veterans, don’t just think about their time in uniform but think of them as part of the community and a very vibrant part of our state,” Chris Kolakowski, the museum’s director, told WMTV in Madison. 

Another veteran featured in the exhibit is Tarra Pickens Gundrum, who participated in the Navy Junior Reserve Officer’s Training Corps in high school before enlisting in the Marine Corps in 1998. 

Gundrum chose to serve in Okinawa, Japan, and was assigned to the 3rd Marine Division. There she made the All-Marine Women’s Basketball team, married a fellow Marine, and went on to be accepted into the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program. Gundrum attended the Marines’ Drill Instructor School at Parris Island, South Carolina, and remained there as a drill instructor until retiring in 2005. 

Today, she lives in and works for Washington County, where she serves her community through the local Rotary Club, participates in the Ride Across Wisconsin charity cycling event, and is an active member of the Marine Corps League nonprofit service organization. 

In 2020, Gundrum authored the book “Finding My Possible: How I Changed My Narrative and Created a Life of Adventure” and began hosting the podcast “The Possible Project” in March 2022.

“I think that my service gave me access to a variety of different people. It gave me access to different parts of the country and different parts of the world. And I think that without that experience, I’d be a different person,” Gundrum said in an oral history interview. 

Kolakowski told WMTV, “You’d be amazed how many families we hear from that say, We didn’t really talk about it. … And so it will help fill in those gaps and spur those conversations.”

The exhibit runs from March 14 to July 6 at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, 30 West Mifflin Street in Madison, tel. (608) 267-1799.