National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation and Google Public Sector Announce Collaboration to Preserve and Share Medal of Honor Stories

Washington, D.C. – The National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation and Google Public Sector today announced a collaboration to explore how agentic solutions can help preserve, connect, and share the stories of Medal of Honor Recipients while keeping original sources, historical experts, and human judgment at the center of the work.

Introduced at the Google Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C., this effort brings together the Museum’s original collections, curatorial expertise, and national character-development initiatives with Google Public Sector’s agentic capabilities, technical scale, and experience serving government and educational institutions.

The Museum is entrusted with more than 3,500 Recipient stories preserved across artifacts, photographs, handwritten correspondence, military records, recordings, curator notes, and family oral history. These materials reveal far more than the single action recognized by a Medal citation but connecting them manually can require months or years of specialized work. Critical context may also disappear as artifacts age and Recipients, relatives, and firsthand witnesses pass away.

For the Museum, applying new technology to that challenge is not a matter of novelty. It is a mission necessity.

“Our responsibility is to preserve the original sources and the human context that gives these stories meaning while finding responsible new ways to inspire America beyond the Museum’s walls,” said Troy Bertram, CEO of the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation. “Google Public Sector brings the capability to help us work across thousands of stories at a scale no museum could achieve alone—without loosening our hold on the truth.”

The initial work will explore how Google Cloud and generative-media capabilities can help Museum professionals transcribe, organize, and connect historical materials, create clearly disclosed interpretations grounded in verified evidence, and expand access through digital experiences and tailored educational resources.

During the Summit, the teams demonstrated the approach through the collections of two Medal of Honor Recipients. The 1939 rescue of the USS Squalus and the story of William Badders showed how artifacts, photographs, operational records, and curator-approved context can support an immersive, historically grounded generative-media experience. The letters and personal objects of Vietnam War Recipient Jerry Wayne Wickam showed how agentic technology can surface relationships across a dispersed collection, revealing a fuller portrait of Wickam as a servicemember, husband, and expectant father—and the family legacy that continues today.

Generated experiences will be clearly distinguished from archival material. Historical claims will remain traceable to their sources, uncertainty will remain visible, and historians, curators, Recipients, veterans, and families will retain authority over how the material is interpreted and shared.

That approach has implications beyond the Museum. Public institutions encounter similar challenges across correspondence, case files, conversations, photographs, and operational records. Technology can help people connect those fragments and understand the human stories behind decisions and outcomes without severing the connection to the original source.

As the nation approaches Veterans Day, the partnership also reflects the ways service can continue beyond the uniform.

“Having served in the Navy, I’ve always believed that true patriotism is service put into action,” said Karen Dahut, CEO of Google Public Sector. “This partnership shows what mission impact can look like when powerful technology is grounded in trusted sources and human expertise—helping more Americans engage with these important stories, carry their lessons forward, and find their own ways to serve.”