The National WWII Museum invites all former Higgins Industries employees and their families to the Museum for a commemorative reunion event and panel discussion. Family members of Andrew Higgins, including his daughter and granddaughter, will be present. Louisiana-area Home Front workers and their families are also invited to join this special salute to their service during World War II. 

Biographer Jerry Strahan will join Andrew Higgins’s granddaughter Gayle Higgins Jones, historian Gerald Meyer, who worked with local students in Nebraska to build a monument to Higgins, and Jimmy Duckworth, who oversaw the building of the Museum’s Higgins Boat. The panel concludes with a rousing rendition of The Higgins March, first performed during wartime, and brought back to life by the Museum’s Victory Belles.

Higgins Reunion Day is presented by The Alta and John Franks Foundation.

Schedule:

10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Higgins Boat Access in Louisiana Memorial Pavilion

Higgins Hands-on Activities in Kushner Restoration Pavilion STEM Innovation Gallery

11:00 a.m. – Noon
Panel Discussion in US Freedom Pavilion: The Boeing Center

Noon – 1:00 p.m.
Book Signing with Jerry Strahan in US Freedom Pavilion: The Boeing Center

Günter Bischof, PhD; Hans Petschar, PhD; and Ambassador Wolfgang Petritsch, PhD, present The Marshall Plan – Since 1947: Saving Europe, Rebuilding Austria

*In partnership with the University of New Orleans Center Austria and the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation

5:00 p.m. Reception with the Panorama Jazz Band

6:00 p.m. Presentation  |  7:00 p.m. Book Signing

This past June marked the 70th anniversary of Secretary of State George C. Marshall’s iconic speech at Harvard University announcing the European Recovery Program, also known as the “Marshall Plan.”

The “Marshall Plan,” heralded as “the most successful American foreign aid program in history,” transferred almost $13 billion in recovery funds to 16 Western European countries between 1948 and 1952. Receiving almost $1 billion in American aid, Austria was one of the recipient nations. Due to its four-power occupation (1945-1955) Austria was considered a “special case,” as it profited not only from the initial aid allocation but also from the “counterpart funds” derived from the American aid.

We invite you to join us for this engaging evening to learn about one of the crowning achievements of the lasting legacy of World War II. The program will be preceded by a reception which will feature the Panorama Jazz Band of New Orleans.

Günter Bischof, PhD, is the Marshall Plan Professor of History and Director of Center Austria: The Austrian Marshall Plan Center for European Studies at the University of New Orleans (UNO). He is also the co-editor of three previous books on the Marshall Plan.

Hans Petschar, PhD, is a historian, librarian, and the Director of the Picture Archives and Graphics Department at the Austrian National Library in Vienna. In 2015-16, he served as the Austrian Marshall Plan Chair at UNO.

Ambassador Wolfgang Petritsch, PhD, is the President of the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation and Chair of the Herbert C. Kelman Institute for Integrative Conflict Transformation. He’s also a former Austrian Ambassador to Yugoslavia, the United Nations, and the OECD, and he also served as the international community’s High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina and the EU’s Special Envoy for Kosovo.