Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeff Hunt.
Hi Jeff, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Following in the footsteps of the first Anglo settlers of Texas, I was born in Kentucky and moved with my family to Texas when I was in junior high school. I have always had a passion for military history and coming to the Lone Star State, which has a military history second to none, merely amplified that. My mother swears that the first word I ever spoke was “combat” as a result of watching the old TV series. Perhaps it all has something to do with the fact that I was born nine months and one day after my father returned from a tour of duty with the U.S. Army in Korea. He and I share a birthday, by the way.
My interest in military history continued through secondary school and I read dozens of books on the Civil War and World War II in particular. When I went college at the University of Texas in Austin the initial plan was to go on to law school. However, I signed up for every history class I could and that’s where I met Dr. George Forgie, who taught a class on the American Civil War and Reconstruction. He was a remarkable teacher, entertaining, informative, insightful and I loved his class so much I arranged to take an independent studies course with him that involved my researching and writing a paper on Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg. That proved such a thoroughly captivating experience that I decided then and there to forget law school and become a professional historian instead.
Dr. Forgie became my mentor and through him I met my life-long best friend, Gill Eastland, and Michael Moore, who introduced both Gill and I to the hobby of historical reenacting. I jumped into Civil War reenacting with both feet and have continued participating in those events for the past 39 years. After finishing my BA in government at UT, I went on to UT Grad School, pursuing an MA in History and had the pleasure of working as Dr. Forgie’s Teaching Assistant for multiple semesters. Once I got my MA, I was able to get a job at Austin Community College as a part-time adjunct teaching survey courses in American History. I also took up the pursuit of a PhD.
Through my contacts in Civil War reenacting, I got involved in World War II reenacting at the Admiral Nimitz National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas (hometown of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet during WWII). That soon led to getting a job as an administrative assistant at the museum. Taking a full-time job meant leaving UT before finishing my doctorate, but I reasoned that the purpose of a PhD was to get just such a job, and with employment in the history field hard to get, it made more sense to grasp the opportunity rather than forego it to finish my doctorate.
About three months after starting at the Nimitz I was shifted over to work as an assistant for Chief Curator Paula Ussary. She taught me the curatorial business from the ground up and I count myself lucky to have learned from such a pro. When Paula moved to another site several years later, I applied for and got the job of Chief Curator. Throughout my time at the Nimitz, I was actively involved in its living history program, interpreting the Pacific War as a U.S. Marine for school groups and during public events. Eventually, I added supervising the living history program to my portfolio as Chief Curator. In that capacity, I organized and ran the largest WWII Pacific Theater battle reenactment ever held: Iwo Jima Plus 60, which took place in February 2005 and was attended by 20,000 spectators and hundreds of Iwo Jima veterans.
Working at the Nimitz Museum was a watershed in my life. At the time, the museum was part of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and as such my duties often brought me to TMD’s Austin Headquarters where I met my future wife, Chris, who worked as a graphic designer for the agency and was helping out on the museum’s big celebration of the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII called V+50. Chris came out to volunteer at the event and after going to a WWII Big Band dance during the event we started dating and a few years later wound up getting married.
In October 2007, I took a new job as Director of the Texas Military Forces Museum at Camp Mabry in Austin, Texas. That 45,000 square-foot facility is the official museum of the Texas National Guard and tells the story of the volunteer and militia units of Texas in the 19th Century, and after the creation of the National Guard in 1903, the Texas Army and Air National Guard as well as the Texas State Guard.
During my time in the museum field, I continued teaching at ACC, eventually becoming an Adjunct Professor of History, though still as a part-timer and teaching night classes. I also managed to write and publish several books and magazine articles on Civil War history during my museum career. The Last Battle of the Civil War: Palmetto Ranch, which was published by the University of Texas Press in 2002, a work that grew out of a research paper I had written in college. In 2017 I published the first of a series of books focused on the Civil War in Virginia covering the second half of 1863. This period between Robert E. Lee’s retreat across the Potomac following Gettysburg until the beginning of Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign in May 1864 had been almost completely ignored by historians and thanks to a conversation I had in college with Dr. Forgie, I had become interested in that time. The first book in what became a four part series, Meade and Lee After Gettysburg, received several awards and was followed by Meade and Lee at Bristoe Station (2019), Meade and Lee at Rappahannock Station (2021) which was a main selection by the Military Book Club and the forthcoming final volume in the set Meade and Lee at Mine Run, due out in 2022. All these volumes were published by the esteemed firm of Savas Beatie, one of the great names in historical publishing.
My involvement in reenacting continued and expanded over time to include the War of 1812, World War I, and the Vietnam War as well as the Civil War and World War II. I have also organized and ran several living history events on the battleship USS Texas.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Lots of people love history, but finding meaningful employment in the history field is not easy. My decision to become a historian rather than go to law school was not popular with my parents, who viewed the choice with skeptical acceptance. I was extremely fortunate to meet and befriend many people throughout my life who shared my passion for history and who were also there to help open doors for me over the course of my career. History is not a field in which one gets rich, but I’ve been blessed to make a decent living at it and even more blessed to have gotten to stay in Central Texas and work in military museums. Most folks who get museum jobs wind up taking a job at whatever site and in whatever place offers them an opportunity, even if it isn’t one that deals with their favorite subject matter or exists exactly where they’d like to live.
Good museums are vibrant and constantly changing organisms. Doing the job right takes money and staff. Sadly both assets are usually in short supply. Consequently, you have to learn to be innovative and to find ways to do more with less. Marketing is always a challenge as there usually isn’t much of a budget to let people know you are out there. Building and maintaining an engaging social media presence and a useful website are keys to reaching the public and both require constant work. Putting on exciting events is a great way to generate free publicity, get people in the door, increase donations and gift shop sales. They are also fantastic vehicles for telling a museum’s story. The living history programs and battle reenactments I helped create and run at both the Nimitz Museum and the Texas Military Forces Museum have been wildly popular and very successful in increasing visitation, income, publicity and telling our story.
Since a museum seldom has enough staff to do everything that needs doing, one learns to wear a lot of hats. You also have to work hard at recruiting and keeping volunteers because no museum can succeed without a dedicated and hardworking core of willing, talented volunteers.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Although my jobs involve lots of everyday administrative duties, including vacuuming floors, cleaning exhibit cases, mopping up spills, manning the front desk when volunteers aren’t available, making budgets, doing staff evaluations, grading tests, etc. etc. I consider being a historian as much an artistic/creative job as a profession.
Teaching, museum and writing all require me to do historical research, which I find fascinating and fun and then find ways to bring history to life, either with talks, living history programs, books, articles and museum exhibits. Teaching people to view history in an objective light, to examine it from all angles, to avoid judging the past by the standards of the present so that useful lessons can be extracted from history, so that history can inspire us, guide us, caution us, is at the heart of what I do.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
Military History is very popular and Americans by and large feel a deep connection to our nation’s story and our veterans. That means that books on military history or museums that deal with it will continue to be popular with readers and visitors. In that sense, the outlook for my industries — books, classrooms and museum — is very bright.
Contact Info:
- Email: txmilmuseum@gmail.com
- Website: www.texasmilitaryforcesmuseum.org
- Instagram: @tmfmuseum
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/texasmilitaryforcesmuseum
- Twitter: @TMFMuseum
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/texas-military-forces-museum-austin
- Other: www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g30196-d1853373-Reviews-Texas_Military_Forces_Museum-Austin_Texas.html
Image Credits:
Personnel Photo: Farid Zarrinabadi Additional Photo: Chris Hunt
