‘Experience the American story’: A Q&A with Sean Georges of the Evansville Wartime Museum
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In September, Sean Georges began his role as executive director of the Evansville Wartime Museum. The Petersburg Road facility, which opened in 2017, promotes awareness of the region’s homefront legacy and wartime contributions.
Georges brings military and corporate experience to the museum’s operations. The Gibson County native served in the Marine Corps for more than a decade—mostly as a military lawyer—and worked for Evansville-based Shoe Carnival for over 20 years.
The TEDx speaker also co-authored a non-fiction book titled On Mission: Your Journey to Authentic Leadership. Georges spoke to Inside INdiana Business about the role of leaders in organizations and his vision for the military museum.
What is your role as executive director of the Evansville Wartime Museum?
We’re sort of building the bridge as we walk on it and defining and fleshing it out.
What we have here is a really interesting organization that’s nothing like the Marine Corps and nothing like corporate America where I spent 22 years. You’ve got an active board of directors. You have 120 active, committed volunteers. You have programs, resources, assets, educational outreach and marketing. You’ve got all the things. You’ve got a big building, groundskeeping. And you’ve got a very small paid staff.
My vision as executive director is to help serve all of the above and include the public. It’s everything from fundraising, financial planning, marketing programs, etc., but not as the person who does all of the things. It’s bringing the talent and resources together.
Tell me about your military experience, law career and Shoe Carnival positions.
I received admission and went to the U.S. Naval Academy. My military service started directly out of high school, four years at Annapolis, and then I took a commission in the Marine Corps. I was a Marine officer for a total of 13 years.
After my first tour of duty at Camp Lejeune, I competed for our funded law program in the Marines and was selected to become a judge advocate. I went to law school at the University of Illinois and served as a JAG [Judge Advocate General’s Corps] for the next ten years: prosecutor, criminal defense, special assistant U.S. Attorney, operational law, law of war. Then I was selected to get an advanced law degree at the Army JAG School at the University of Virginia.
I left active duty, came back to southern Indiana for private practice and did about three years of civil litigation. But I desperately missed being on a team with a clear mission. It’s how I’m wired and what the Marine Corps does to us. We get really mission-focused.
I found out they were staffing a general counsel position at Shoe Carnival. They had about 100 stores then, and 22 years later, there are 400 stores and 6,000 employees in 35 states in Puerto Rico. I had general counsel and senior vice president of human resources responsibilities and secretary to the board of directors. I knew nothing about shoes and knew very little about business, but I had a sense of what it took to lead a team in support of a mission.
I retired a year and a half ago and thought I was going to be done. I was working on some volunteer things with veterans groups. Then I heard about this position at the museum and thought, “All right, maybe I’ve still got one more gig, a little bit more gas in the tank.” And I’m honored to serve here.
Your LinkedIn profile revealed you’re a TEDx speaker. What do you talk about on stage?
I tend to be pretty passionate about leadership. The talk centers around what happened with my daughter who was in a near-fatal automobile accident. It’s about the first responders and their actions at the scene.
Through teamwork and authentic servant leadership, they were able to size up the situation, work as a team, extract her from the vehicle, call off the Life Flight helicopter and get her in the hands of medical professionals. An eight-and-a-half-hour surgery later at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, she lived.
I reflected on what had happened that morning from a leadership perspective. A unique team formed with a clear mission, and they were leading and following and leading and following, working as a team in the moment. They saved my daughter’s life, just a remarkable set of circumstances.
I use that story as a way to highlight what I learned in the Marine Corps about what it means to lead, which is to serve your teammates in the direction of a shared mission.
What is your definition of servant leadership, and why is it important?
It’s the very heart and soul of what it means to influence. If to lead is to influence another person in alignment in the direction of a shared mission, how do you influence? You influence through a relationship with that person. You influence through your example and how you engage.
One of the things it comes down to is mission focus. You’re at the bottom, your teammates are above you. Everything you do is aligned with that mission. You’re asking yourself one simple question: what’s my best and highest role to serve my teammates in alignment with the mission? And you’re constantly asking and getting feedback on that.
You don’t always have it right. You’re going to learn as you go, but you’re always looking up. It’s not about you at the top issuing orders. Nobody was standing out there at the scene of that accident saying, “You need to do this.” They were working as a team. They were absolutely taking initiative, problem-solving and supporting one another in a selfless way with a mission focus.
The accident was a dramatic example of what we learned in the Marine Corps: leaders eat last. It’s not about you. It’s about your teammates in alignment with the mission. And it’s not about coddling. It’s answering the question, “How can I serve my teammates so that we move in the direction of mission?” It’s a sacred responsibility, and here’s one of the keys: you cannot lead without love. It’s inescapable.
What makes the Evansville Wartime Museum special?
It all starts with a unique story that happened in Evansville. How America responded to and geared up for a global conflict. Evansville was a small, rural, manufacturing town on the Ohio River in the center part of the continent. World War II starts, and it’s like, “All right, what have we got that we can use to help the cause?”
There were acts of initiative, leadership and resourcefulness—a complete transformation in a rapid way. We went from making appliances to fulfilling 96% of the Allies’ requirements for 45-caliber rounds. We built nearly one-half of the P-47 fighter aircraft. Talk about building the bridge as you walk on it. It was like, “Let’s figure it out and get it done.”
The initiative transformed America and this community. People can still see the old plant where they refurbished the tanks during the war and the plant where they built the P-47s. It was always a sense of pride. The more you learn about how the people rose to the occasion and the people who served in uniform, it represents in a way you can still put your hands on the best that is America.
What are your goals for the museum?
Immediate goals have to do with organization. We’re a young team here as far as how long we’ve been operating. I have been challenged to raise the level of both knowledge and appreciation, not just in our region but internationally. Our goal is to make this a destination for people to visit and understand America and its history.
I believe when you accomplish something difficult in your life, it informs you as to what you’re capable of doing in the future. Same with communities. This is a classic story and an inspiring place to live. I’ve been all over the world, but I think we still have something to give and to show about what’s possible to other nations.
What are the challenges facing the museum?
We’re losing our World War II veterans and those who were a part of supplying the war. So we need to get the following generations involved. We also tell a bigger story, which is not just about World War II, but it’s also about later conflicts like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need to grow those stories and continue to get people to come in and take a tour.
Getting the whole community behind telling and celebrating this story and the whole region is a part of that. Raising the level of understanding and getting people involved, not just financially. Evansville is an American World War II Heritage City, the only city in Indiana to receive that designation. There are just a lot of things to be proud of.
What do you want people to know about the museum?
It’s a broader story of America. It’s a story about what happened in a particular community in the space of a handful of years that gives this dramatic picture of pre-war America transitioning into post-war America and then the America that existed afterward. They can find it all here.
What events are coming up at the Evansville Wartime Museum?
We’ve got the Huey helicopters providing rides Oct. 14-15. Tank rides happen periodically during the week. We’re also initiating a Holocaust exhibit and a homefront presentation. Of course, we celebrate Halloween and Christmas events.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Evansville is a rich, cultural resource for the state of Indiana as well as Illinois and Kentucky. We’d love people to give us a try. We’ve had visitors from all over the United States because of the unique aspect we bring. Our numbers on visitor satisfaction are 90+%. So give us a look. Come to Evansville and experience the American story in a deeper way.