Newsday from New York, New York • 269

4 D14 f-r7v7irs JONATHAN MANDELL Learning History a Battle At the Intrepid 'HEN HE TOOK command of the aircraft carrier Intrepid off the coast of Manhattan Msg' Gen Donald Ray Gardner flew the F-18 Hornet that was on the bow ofa sister battleship the New York That exhibit opens Feb 15 the 100th anniversary of this Havana Harbor explosion that helped ignite the Spanish-American War was ony a three-month war but a lot happened a lot" says Jerry Roberts the senior curator of the Intrepid was a defining moment in American history We were a frontier nation that took on an Old World power Out of that warwe emerged as a new Others have seen that war as a defining moment in yellow journalism end the start of UJS imperialism But these are perhaps the same people who would regard a place like the Intrepid as an exercise in American chest-beating very liberal person would see it that way" the general says just as important to present this piece of history to the To the general the Intrepid is no ordinary museum off a memorial a monument to those people who died on ship at wartime Then a museum also fighter jet off the flight deck and into the Fenian Gulf War HnJginj Scud -missiles and firing on Iraqi tanks Of course he was not as thrilled about it as the 8-year-olds sitting next to him since Gardner had flown on the real plane not just the amusement ride grandly called the navy flight simulator that is part of the Intrepid Sea Air Space Museum the neat thing about being a marine Gardner says can shoot anything there is to shoot fly anything there is to fly You can Mow things up You can visit anywhere" Donald Gardner raised in Tennessee was in the Marine Corps for 40 years loved it There were some bad dears I like writing parents saying your child got killed But fim being a He is most proud of having startled as an enlisted man and ending up a major general Photo Michael Ach Gardner remembers Intrepid museum along the way commanding every possible combat formation from smallest to largest: company battalion regiment brigade division the first having 40 people the last 35000 Unlike other retired generals who in recent days all seem to be returning to their second careers as TV war analysts Gardner has been for the past 16 months the 'president and of the Intrepid museum He is the first actual military man to head this aggressively out-of-place assortment of outsized and outdated military vehicles ships planes tanks and a submarine that loom like alien invaders off 46th Street in Manhattan The general has ambitious plans to lure visitors The first phase was last month when he closed the Intrepid down (for the first time since it became a museum in 1982) for minor repairs and renovations Now he has reopened it with two new exhibitions The first called We is a modest presentation of the history of African-Americans in the military The second is a more elaborate display ofthe sinking of the Maine featuring the original carved wooden figurehead huge and colorful Mewadar Ms) Gea Donald Ray the Maine at the third educational And then finally So here is the original bronxe statue of the men planting the American flag at I wo Jima a later and larger version of which is now at Arlington National Cemetery Here also is an exhibition entitled that shows the precise location of 25 shipwrecks around Long Island (and gives the relative depths of such famous wrecks as the Andrea Daria and the Titanic) Near the entrance are two tanka one Soviet one American on either side of a piece of the Berlin Wall In the next few months there will be a real Soviet spaceship new flight simulators and the first Flight Deck Olympics And oh yes the annual anti-war demonstration one every the general says a picket line by a local group of seminarians the only focal point for the military in New York besides he explains At the Intrepid Sea Air Space Museum there is a place even for the very liberal K3 The museum at Pier 86 West 46th Street and 12th Avenue is now open 10 am to 5 pm Wednesday to cr oc illiOKiHgP liu '(SSSEOT fe 3 0 -tig--.