“Ben Williams retired last month as the president and chief operating officer of the National Infantry Foundation. The National Infantry Museum and Soldier Center is part of his legacy. Recently, the Mississippi native sat down with Ledger-Enquirer reporter Chuck Williams to talk about the museum and his role…”

Excerpt: “We really had a great professional team of architects that presented us with a lot of options. We were fortunate to have some seed money… that allowed us to go out and hire what we felt like were the very best architects and designers in the country. We put out RFPs (requests for proposal), had a tremendous amount of interest, and we selected as our lead design firm Verner Johnson and Associates out of Boston.

They had done about 130 museums at the time, and one of the latest ones they had finished was the Texas State History Museum in Austin, Texas. We went out there as we were doing our due diligence and talked to the people and found what a wonderful job they did. We had the very best of museum architects to help create the design.”