Living
Muscatatuck and the Indiana National Guard Deliver in 3-D
By Staff Sgt. Brad Staggs, Muscatatuck Urban Training Center Public Affairs
Jul 27, 2010 - 2:14:27 PM

Blackanthem Military News

Kari Carmany-George, cultural resource manager for Muscatatuck Urban Training Center, teaches Brooke Rice how to navigate through the 3-D environment of the old Muscatatuck State Developmental Center at the Jennings County Historical Society as her grandmother, Pat Rice, president of the Jennings County Historical Society watches. The Indiana National Guard and MUTC, in cooperation with Purdue University, created the computerized 3-D history tour.

VERNON, Ind. - Fourth-grader Brooke Rice from Columbus, Ind., slipped on the 3-D glasses and started traveling around Muscatatuck as if she had been there her whole life. But this wasn’t the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center she was traveling through; it was the Muscatatuck State Developmental Center of old. She was impressed enough that she didn’t want to stop.

Pat Rice, president of the Jennings County Historical Society, described the "tour" as amazing.

"This will give school children a hands-on experience that they will love!"

Rice’s granddaughter agreed. When asked if she liked the program, she enthusiastically shook her head yes, not bothering to look away from the screen. When asked if she thought her classmates would like it, she gave the same affirmative response.

As part of an agreement to help preserve the history of the Muscatatuck facility, the Indiana National Guard went to the Purdue University Computer Graphics Department and, over a four-year period, created the three-dimensional walk-through.

In the program, the viewer can not only fly through the former MSDC, he or she can also click on buttons which will take them to historical eyewitness accounts of events that happened at the hospital and view a timeline from 1919 to 2005, the year that MSDC closed and MUTC opened.
 
While the 3-D tour will only be available to see at the Jennings County Historical Society building in Vernon, a two-dimensional version of the tour and a historical look at the Muscatatuck facility will be available in August on the MUTC Web site at www.mutc.in.ng.mil.

A small museum celebrating the history of the Muscatatuck facility will also be set up in the old assistant administrator’s house, Building 30, on MUTC property by November.

"Since its beginning in the 1920s, Muscatatuck has been devoted to making the world a better place in which to live," said Brig. Gen. Clif Tooley, commander of the Camp Atterbury-Muscatatuck Center for Complex Operations. "We shall also never forget that Muscatatuck and the community are inextricably linked. We will forever be indebted to the good people from the surrounding communities that collectively make up the Muscatatuck family."