Curt Brown Stories
Longtime journalist and author Curt Brown brings his love of storytelling and veterans to the Minnesota Military & Veterans Museum.
A Stuart’s Story
Private First Class Peck was among 64 young Brainerd men belonging to Company A of the U.S. Army’s 194th Tank Battalion. Half those men died in combat in the Philippines or along the forced Bataan march — an infamous and hellish 65-mile trek across a Filipino peninsula to disease-ripe prison camps in 1942.
Charles (Ace) Parker’s D-Day Heroics Will Live On
Lt. Charles (Ace) Parker dodged the smoke, gunfire and maimed bodies littering Omaha Beach, leading 23 Army Rangers up the 100-foot bluff as D-Day exploded into chaos on June 6, 1944.
Suddenly, a German sniper wounded two of the Rangers by Parker’s side and those zinging bullets were starting to pierce his backpack.
“I was lying flat so that I had to struggle out of the pack and abandon it so I could go faster into the ditch,” Parker recalled 50 years later in 1994. “So I came out of the thing without even a holster. I just had a .45 in my hand.”
Glide Path
Juanita Swanson donated the dilapidated artifact for which her late husband swapped a Continental A65 airplane engine in the 1980s. The training glider had been hanging all but forgotten for nearly 35 years in a small-town municipal airport hangar 70 miles west of the museum in the Swansons’ hometown of Henning, Minn.
Filling The Ranks
In his new position, Olson will serve in a critical public outreach role, connecting Minnesota veterans and military leaders with the greater civilian community through the revamped museum. Doors open next summer at the newly expanded, $30 million, 40,000-square-foot Minnesota Military and Veterans Museum at Camp Ripley between St. Cloud and Brainerd.
“I’m honored to join the Minnesota Military and Veterans Museum as Deputy Director and help lead the next chapter in preserving and sharing the stories of our service members, veterans and military families,” Kevin Olson said.
From Roots to Revival: Our Museum Story 1976-2026
For nearly 50 years, the museum’s archives, displays, and library were housed in several nondescript buildings within the Camp Ripley security perimeter. It remained largely hidden from public view.
Until now.
Trio of New Board Members
One is a former Navy laundry worker, proud foster parent and Ojibwe tribal leader in Cloquet. Another is a renowned surgeon originally from Ohio who has fixed deformed skulls and stitched up facial lacerations for Minnesota Wild hockey players. And the third grew up raising dairy cows in South Dakota before launching a decorated 35-year career with the Minnesota National Guard.
Drawing on those wildly different backgrounds, Billie DeFoe, Dr. David Hamlar Jr. and Brigadier General Lowell Kruse will braid their shared passion for history as they join the board of the Minnesota Military and Veterans Museum.
Curt is writing character-driven columns for the museum’s newsletter — as preparations mount in anticipation of the 2026 opening of the $32 million museum expansion at Camp Ripley.
A history major at Macalester College, Brown spent more than 30 years in Minnesota journalism — working for the Fergus Falls Daily Journal, the Associated Press, the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Minnesota Star Tribune. He wrote a popular Minnesota History column in the Star Tribune from 2014-2024.
Brown was named Minnesota Journalist of the Year in 2012 for his six-part serial narrative and e-book, “In the Footsteps of Little Crow” — published on the 150th anniversary of the U.S.-Dakota War. His books include “Minnesota 1918,” which chronicled the trifecta of woe when the flu pandemic, WWI and forest fires ravaged the northeastern part of the state. His first book, “So Terrible a Storm,” detailed a wicked 1905 storm that walloped Duluth and led to Split Rock Lighthouse’s construction.
Curt lives on a trout stream near Durango, Colorado, and looks forward to this opportunity to tell more stories about Minnesota veterans’ sacrifices and contributions as the new museum becomes a reality.