Shaping the New Museum Visitor Experience

Long-time soldier, chaplain to spearhead docent program at Minnesota Military & Veterans Museum
By Curt Brown

Philip “Buddy” Winn juggled wildly varied missions during his 37-year military career. And despite retiring in 2025, he’s about to embark on yet another assignment at 55 — coordinating volunteer docents when the new Minnesota Military & Veterans Museum opens in 2026 at Camp Ripley near Little Falls.

First enlisting in the Minnesota National Guard in 1988 as an artillery forward observer, Winn later joined the active-duty Army, serving in South Korea in the 1990s before entering seminary and becoming a military chaplain.

That calling took him from Iraq in 2007 to Kuwait in 2011 and 2018 — and even to the streets of Minneapolis in 2020, when more than 7,000 National Guard members were deployed during Operation Safety Net. Winn’s team worked with community and faith organizations to orchestrate a collective Prayer for Peace spanning eight denominations.

As state chaplain of the Minnesota National Guard from 2020 until 2025, Winn and his team ministered to and coached soldiers and airmen from a wide array of spiritual backgrounds.

“We’ve taken Catholic soldiers to Mass and helped a Muslim airman requesting religious accommodation during Ramadan,” Winn said. “We gathered Jewish soldiers to attend Sabbath services and secured space for Wiccans to participate in solstice observances.”

Whether at the burn-unit bedside of a soldier grotesquely injured in a Gulf War IED explosion or comforting Guard members amid the turmoil of 2020 Minneapolis, Winn has tackled each assignment with grace, courage, and heart.

“Buddy is one of the most caring and compassionate people I know,” said Doug Wortham, former National Guard command sergeant major and current host of the Minnesota Military Radio Hour. “He is genuine and has a strong passion for helping others become the best version of themselves possible.”

The new docent team will be in good hands when the Minnesota Military & Veterans Museum begins tours in 2026 at its $32-million facility at Camp Ripley. Winn will lead a team of roughly two dozen volunteers — helping them craft their stories to enhance visitors’ experiences across the 40,000-square-foot collection of Minnesota military artifacts and narratives.

“I think our museum will be a premier attraction for people heading north to the lakes — a truly world-class museum,” Winn said. “Our job won’t just be to tell visitors things, but to engage them with personal stories, feelings, and dialogue.”

He draws inspiration from battlefield guides interpreting Civil War history at places such as Antietam and Gettysburg — which he visited in 2020 as part of a trip to the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

“Ninety percent of the people who applied to be docents at Gettysburg didn’t pass the test,” Winn said. “Their knowledge has to be astronomical, but so does their ability to connect and share those stories in the context of our state’s rich military history.”

He expects to recruit most of his docents from Minnesota’s veteran community and plans to expand the team during the busy summer months.

“Buddy will be the perfect person to develop a robust docent program,” said Randal Dietrich, the museum’s executive director. “Our cadre of volunteer guides will not only be well-schooled in our state’s military history but will also have a strong sense of service to every museum visitor.”

Winn grew up in Osseo, where he and his wife, Collette, have lived for decades. They met on a blind date at a Green Mill in early 2000 and have since raised three children amid multiple deployments — recently welcoming their eighth grandchild.

When Winn began considering a shift from soldier to clergyman, Collette’s response sealed the decision.

“She didn’t say, ‘I think that’s what the Lord has in store for you,’” Winn recalled. “She said, ‘I think that’s what the Lord has for us.’”

He follows in the footsteps of a long line of both soldiers and spiritual leaders. Winn’s father, two grandparents, three uncles, an aunt, his brother, and a cousin all served in the military. Counting his 37 years, that group of ten family members has amassed more than 250 years of combined service — fitting for a nation that celebrates its 250th birthday next year.

“I haven’t really ever known any different than being in uniform,” Winn said. “My dad basically said, ‘Hey, we’re going to the recruiter,’ and I just thought that’s what you did.”

Winn has gone by “Buddy” since childhood. “That’s all my wife has ever called me,” he said. His father, also named Phil Winn, serves as an outreach pastor at Living Word Christian Center in Brooklyn Park. His grandfather, Luther Winn, joined the Army in 1939, served in Korea in the early 1950s, and overcame post-traumatic stress to become an ordained Catholic deacon.

“I tried to carve out my own path since the rest of my family had already done that,” said Buddy, who rose to the rank of colonel.

Shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he shifted his focus from battlefields to chaplaincy — enrolling at Bethel Seminary in St. Paul and joining the chaplain corps in 2006.

Although many people know of military chaplains only through Father John Mulcahy on MASH*, the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps dates back to July 29, 1775 — celebrating its 250th anniversary this summer.

“Chaplains maintain the most lethal weapon on the battlefield — and that’s a soldier,” Winn said. “We maintain soldiers and their families. We nurture the living, care for the wounded, and honor the fallen.”

Serving the spiritual needs of the state’s 14,000 soldiers and airmen has often included accompanying the dead from the stretcher to the mortuary.

“What an honor it is to be part of their journey to their final resting spot,” he said. “Just knowing their family would rest easier because I was there — I was humbled to the core by the opportunity to serve. It’s a job that was very demanding but also very rewarding.”

Winn expects that same sense of purpose — that balance of challenge and reward — in his new role as docent coordinator when the museum opens in the summer of 2026.