‘Year of the NCO’ spurs growth at Bliss museum - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

‘Year of the NCO’ spurs growth at Bliss museum

The U.S. Army Museum of the Noncommissioned Officer at Fort Bliss, Texas, is being expanded and upgraded here as an initiative of the Army’s Year of the NCO program.

The museum is scheduled for a major refurbishment, including improved exhibits, an NCO oral history program and expanded capacity for storage, which means the museum staff can add to the museum’s collection of artifacts and other items, said curator Larry Arms.

The museum will “redo our exhibits, which take visitors back from the present to the American Revolution,” said Arms, author of “A History of the NCO,” a booklet widely disseminated at Army schools. “We also plan to activate and energize our NCO oral history program.”

The renovation will also include air conditioning and heating equipment.

The facility will remain at its current location near the Sergeants Major Academy.

Established in 1978, the museum “will continue to focus on the small-unit leader and leader of men, and how the role of the NCO has grown throughout history,” Arms said.

The museum will continue to display items from its collection of insignia, uniforms and symbols of the NCO from the earliest days of the Army.

The museum averages about 10,000 visitors annually, mostly soldiers, but Arms expects that figure will increase with the planned improvements and a sharply increased population of soldiers and Army family members at Fort Bliss.

The museum, open to the public, is located in the midst of ongoing construction on the Biggs Airfield sector of Fort Bliss, about halfway between the Sergeants Major Academy and facilities for the Combat Aviation Brigade of the 1st Armored Division.