Retired Brig. Gen. Peter Jones picked to lead National Infantry Museum Foundation

There will be a change of command early next year at the National Infantry Museum.

Greg Camp, the president and chief operating officer of the foundation that owns and operates the museum just off the Fort Benning Gate, will be retiring effective Jan. 10 and will be replaced by recently retired Brig. Gen. Peter Jones.

The decision was made Wednesday by the National Infantry Museum Foundation board of directors and announced on Thursday. The board also approved the promotion of Andy Redmond, a retired Air Force colonel, to executive vice president.

Camp, a retired colonel, has been involved with the museum for 15 years, the first as an executive vice president. In January 2016, he was promoted to his current post when Ben Williams retired.

“We knew we had to pick someone who would embrace Columbus and Columbus will embrace,” Camp said. “There is no doubt in my mind this community will embrace Pete Jones.”

Jones was most recently the commandant of the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning’s Maneuver Center of Excellence.

Jones is a third-generation infantryman. His late father, retired Maj. Gen. Lincoln Jones, was born at Fort Benning in the old hospital that once housed the Infantry Museum.

Jones has known Fort Benning and Columbus since he was a child, living on Lucky Street in Oakland Park. He spent the last two years as commandant of the Infantry School at Fort Benning before he retired on Oct. 31.

Jones, a 1985 U.S. Military Academy at West Point, also commanded 3rd Brigade in 2008 when it was housed at Fort Benning.

Retiring in Columbus and taking the job to direct the National Infantry Museum is a natural fit, Jones said.

“For those of us who consider this a family business, it always comes back to Fort Benning,” Jones said. “There were a lot of us that grew up as kids in Oakland Park when our dads went to fight in Vietnam.”

Jones has watched the National Infantry Museum go from an idea to a reality, and he jumped at the opportunity to lead it. The museum opened in 2009, but the fund raising and planning for the project had been going on for about a decade before it opened.

“My father had been a huge supporter of the museum from the beginning,” Jones said. “In the early years, I saw what Jerry White, Ben Williams and Greg Camp were trying to do when they were raising the money. In 2008 as a brigade commander, I saw them raise a Bradley on a pedestal and build the museum around it. And when I deployed and came back home, I saw this beautiful building.”

As his Army retirement became imminent, Jones said he had a mutual interest with the museum foundation leadership about the job.

“It became real in the last couple of weeks,” Jones said. “Greg has done an outstanding job and I know that I have big shoes to fill.”

Camp, 71, has been involved in the fund raising for the $110-million museum since well before it was built. He will continue to fund-raise in a part-time capacity. The foundation needs $5 million more to retire the debt on the museum.

“That is what I was doing before the museum opened,” he said. “I don’t want to totally disconnect.”

Jones and his wife, Stephanie, live in Columbus. They have two sons, one a freshman at Columbus High School and the other a freshman at Columbus State University.

This story was originally published November 16, 2017 at 6:21 PM with the headline "Retired Brig. Gen. Peter Jones picked to lead National Infantry Museum Foundation."