In Charles “Chip” Duncan’s family, military service has been a part of life for generations throughout most major military conflicts and wars the country has been in — including three of his children who currently serve.
His sons, Konrad and Ruben Duncan, are both in the Army National Guard and his daughter, Mandy Duncan, just enlisted in the U.S. Army and is preparing to ship off to basic training this summer.
However, when Duncan, 53, was old enough to enter the service himself, a childhood asthma diagnosis prevented him from following in his father’s footsteps.
“People always ask me, ‘Are you a veteran?’ I’m like, ‘No, I’m the black sheep of the family. We go all the way back to the Revolutionary War,’” Chip said.
Though he couldn’t serve in the military, he has now dedicated his life to serving veterans.
He does so in numerous ways, from being the Veterans Memorial Museum’s executive director to working alongside members of the Lewis County Veterans Advisory Board, which advocates for veterans living in the county and aids them in dealing with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and obtaining VA benefits.
The Veterans Memorial Museum in Chehalis is also now the home of Veterans Journey Forward, a nonprofit founded by U.S. Marine Corps veteran Jesse Lloyd that provides veterans with peer counseling and VA benefit navigation.
"Working with Chip is just fun, to be honest,” Lloyd said. “He has been kind of a mentor because the business aspect of running something like this is not something I knew. He comes at things from a totally different perspective than anything you’d read in a book for business. ... He’s very good at pivoting and coming up with solutions that are not traditional. With Veterans Journey Forward being new, we’ve had to pivot constantly, and if I would have done this by myself, I would have been beating my head against the wall."
For many other local veterans, the museum simply serves as a place to socialize with their brothers in arms.
"Chip’s a great guy. He’s got the veterans’ best interest at heart,” said Mike Cheeks, a U.S. Air Force veteran who served from 1973 to 1994. "And as you can see, he’s done lots and lots for us."
"Although we didn’t appreciate him changing the signs in the latrine,” Robert Jordan, a U.S. Army veteran who served from 1964 to 1969, jokingly added.
Lately, Chip has been going beyond helping veterans, partnering with other various nonprofits in Lewis County and allowing them to use the museum’s grounds to host events.
Some examples include the Lewis County Autism Coalition Car and BMX Show benefiting the Autism Coalition, and the first quarterly Operation Adoption, a pet adoption event organized by Veterans Journey Forward peer counselor Kristi Popenoe in partnership with Rochester’s Red Rose Animal Rescue and Feisty Felines feral cat rescue.
Other nonprofits that have recently utilized the museum’s space are the Survivor’s Advocacy Group and Love Covers, which organized events for volunteers to come together and sew quilts for veterans on palliative care.
Chip is also involved with the local car community, hosting many other car shows at the museum and organizing and running Lewis County’s annual Gambler 500, in which gearheads take their beloved project cars on a poker run to visit local businesses and collect and dispose of illegally dumped trash on forest roads.
This is all just scratching the surface of the many endeavors he takes on, all with the goal of helping or aiding others, and why Chip has been named The Chronicle’s 2024 Person of the Year.
Carrying on the vision
First founded in 1995 by Lee Grimes, Chip would eventually take over the Veterans Memorial Museum in 2011 when Grimes retired, but he met him long before then at the Centralia Community Church of God.
"I met Lee in 2004, when we were still working in the missions field," Chip said. "... We just got to talking and I actually visited the museum and realized that it was absolutely something different than any other museum I had been to. There’s a different component to this. It’s the personal touch.”
The two had other things in common, too, like Grimes wanting to join the military but not being able to due to a medical condition, as Grimes had a heart murmur.
Chip and Grimes got to know each other better and Grimes even floated the idea of Chip eventually taking over for him, but for the time being, Chip returned to the missions field in Hungary.
Grimes founded the museum with the intent to let visitors know every veteran’s life has a story and to give them a place to tell them.
He first started the museum in his garage, personally interviewing veterans to gather their stories after a WWII U.S. Navy veteran thanked him for his efforts in organizing a Fourth of July veterans’ recognition program at the Centralia Community Church of God in 1993.
Following their interviews with him, many veterans began entrusting Grimes with their uniforms and artifacts from their time in service, and soon the collection outgrew his garage and was moved into
a 2,000-square-foot building in Centralia.
Eventually, more space was needed as more veterans continued to contribute to the collection, and it moved to its current location at 100 SW Veterans Way in Chehalis, in 2004.
Upon his return from the missions field, Grimes brought Chip on as his administrative assistant and began teaching him the ins and outs of running a nonprofit, until finally passing the reins off to Chip in 2011.
Since taking over, Chip has both carried on Grimes’ vision for the museum and expanded on it.
The museum not only serves as a conduit for veterans to share their stories and preserve their history, but as a place where veterans can congregate with each other, and now even a place where veterans can access peer counseling and VA benefits thanks to Veterans Journey Forward.
Chip credited Grimes with laying down the foundation for Veterans Journey Forward, though he had no idea the organization would ever exist.
"I was going through records and I found Lee’s letter of resignation, and he was like, ‘I founded this museum,’ so on and so forth, and he wrote down two key points. The first was he said our number one mission is to make sure our veteran community is taken care of and can get the healing that they need," Chip said. "When he wrote that, there was no vision of Veterans Journey Forward. It was just that we’re here in the community to help the veterans in our community."
Grimes’ second point was to ensure the museum continued honoring and telling the stories of veterans.
And just as Grimes taught Chip how to successfully manage a nonprofit, Chip is passing the same knowledge on to Lloyd.
"Having someone with more experience has made it possible to switch up from going through the traditional routes," Lloyd said. "... Because of his guidance, we’re seeing all new ways to approach problems that I definitely wouldn’t have done."
In the couple short years since its founding, Veterans Journey Forward has assisted more than 1,600 local veterans and their families. It brings in an estimated $5.5 million in disability benefits to county veterans annually.
"That’s preventing a veteran from becoming houseless, from not being able to pay the bills,” Chip said. “Or in some situations, it’s a veteran that’s already comfortably economically, but now they’ve got an extra $500 in spending money. Where are they gonna spend it? Here in Lewis County.”
Most importantly, it gives veterans a local option for getting help with VA benefits ever since the Chehalis VA Clinic closed in 2021.
Chip and Lloyd continue to expand Veterans Journey Forward, including recently hiring a new VA dependency and indemnity compensation (DIC) claims specialist.
“This is happening now for a lot of our Vietnam veterans … with exposure to agent orange and getting cancer, a lot of these veterans are passing away. The DIC program provides funding to their spouse when they pass away,” Chip said.
And whether it’s a veteran or their family coming in for help from Veterans Journey Forward, they pay nothing.
However, over the past year, Chip has expanded his outreach beyond just veterans and their families.
Working to grow and empower his local community
Chip first began working with Grimes at the Veterans Memorial Museum just prior to the 2007 flood, which caused significant damage to the museum.
Fortunately, thanks to community support, the museum reopened in 2008.
"It was like we almost never shut down. We were financially in really good shape, but that was a lot of community support,” Chip said. “So when I took over as director, I looked at it as, ‘We’re one catastrophe away from being closed. So let’s build up a reserve with the goal of being able to operate not taking a single dime in, still able to make payroll, still pay insurance and keep the doors open and lights on, the whole nine yards.’”
Through going out and getting involved with the community in doing more fundraisers, Chip was able to build up the museum’s emergency reserve fund by 2017. Then COVID-19 hit, and thankfully, the reserve fund did its job.
"COVID really changed a lot in me and how I look at this place, because I was watching other museums throughout the country just go under. They didn’t have reserves and the ability to stay open," Chip said. “So it became, ‘We’re OK, but there’s other people that are hurting around us. The various businesses, the other museums, the other tourist attractions, they need as much help as they can get, so what can we do?’”
With the COVID-19 lockdown forcing many to close their doors, Chip decided to step up. The idea was to start by at least getting people to come visit the county.
"The first thing we did that was community outreach was the Fourth of July parade, because it was cancelled. We still need to have that, people need that normalcy and to get out and interact," Chip said.
This benefited the local economy, too, and Chip kept organizing additional events out in the community, such as the Gambler 500 in East Lewis County.
"I have all these people coming from all over the Pacific Northwest, so I’m going to send them to these various businesses and say, ‘Hey, do patronage here, they’ll give you a (poker run) sticker. Go buy some ice cream from the Elbe (Market) Country Store, the place with the giant Bigfoot,’” Chip said. “Whatever I could do to make my customers other people’s customers as well, to build those businesses, I’m going to do.”
He also started working with his fellow local museum directors at the White Pass Country Historical Museum and Lewis County Historical Museum, offering them guidance to help bring more visitors in.
In 2024, Chip reached out even further to organizations including the Lewis County Autism Coalition, the Survivor’s Advocacy Group, Love Covers and more through Veterans Journey Forward.
"If I can use my platform to let the community know that these organizations are here, or if I can help them raise more money so that they can let people know and provide more services, let’s do it,” Chip added.
Despite all he does for local veterans and the community, Chip remains humble.
"The Person of the Year thing, I don’t deserve this. It’s Jesse. It’s Brianna. It’s Kristi. It’s Sam. They deserve it, not me. I’m just the face of the museum … I’m honored in a way, but it’s my staff who really deserves this,” Chip said.
To learn more about the Veterans Memorial Museum and Veterans Journey Forward, visit their websites at veteransmuseum.org and veteransjourneyforward.org.
