Telling their stories: VPT to preserve veteran accounts
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This photograph is on the cover of a brochure promoting "The War," a seven-part Ken Burns film on World War II premiering on Vermont Public Television on Sept. 23. |
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By Peter Hirschfeld Times Argus Staff - Published: September 6, 2007
Tape is rolling. And the clock is ticking.
As the nation buries its World War II veterans at a rate of more than 1,000 per day, Vermont Public Television is working to record the memories of Green Mountain soldiers before it's too late.
"This treasure of a generation is dying at rate of 1,000 a day at least in the United States," Ann Curran, community relations director for Vermont Public Television, said Wednesday. "Many of their stories haven't been told."
The project, dubbed "Vermont World War II Stories," aims to document and preserve the firsthand accounts of this state's living veterans by soliciting their oral and written histories. Launched in conjunction with the highly anticipated airing of Ken Burns' seven-part documentary on World War II, VPT will use both traditional media and the World Wide Web to collect and disseminate the historical accounts.
The monumental number of Vermonters who fought in World War II attests to the impact the conflict had on this tiny state. More than 43,000 Green Mountain veterans participated either stateside or in foreign theaters, far eclipsing Vermont participation in any other foreign war.
Curran says Burns' film will do for World War II what his other now-famous documentary did for the Civil War. VPT, she says, will seize on the groundswell of historical interest by capturing the stories of Vermonters who were actually there."I think it's going to really, really get people talking," Curran says. "It's a generation that doesn't always talk about the things they experienced … But if they feel like somebody's really interested and they're being listened to, they will often open up and talk about what they saw."
Count J. Francis Angier among the reluctant storytellers. The Williston resident grew up on a Vermont farm and flew combat missions in a B-17 before he was shot down over Germany and incarcerated in a Nazi prison camp for seven months.
"I didn't like to talk about myself too much," Angier says.
When students and young people took an interest in his wartime stories, however, the 85-year-old veteran began speaking in classrooms and even wrote a memoir of his World War II experience, titled "Ready or Not: Into the Wild Blue."
"Before that I hadn't talked too much about it … Some parts are a little wrenching – the losses and so on," Angier says. "But I found that talking about it to groups was good therapy really."
An interview with Angier filmed by Vermont Public Television will appear during station breaks when VPT airs Burns' "The War." He says the state needs to act quickly if it hopes to capture for posterity the stories of other living veterans.
"We're not going to be here much longer," he says.
Tom Brooks lives in Ludlow and is both a veteran of World War II and historian of it. Oral histories have their shortcomings, he says, as do all accounts based on human memory. But documenting the firsthand accounts before this so-called "Greatest Generation" has passed on, he says, is vital for the country.
"World War II was a big event and touched a huge number of people," Brooks says. "There's something about the nature of the war they fought, and it's important not only to them and their particular time but also it's important to us in the present."
The VPT project will rely on a variety of media to record and broadcast the historical accounts of Vermonters. Veterans, or their Web-savvy family members, can link to the project via www.vpt.org, where veterans can either write 500-word accounts of their World War II experience or call a toll-free number and record oral histories. Contributions will be archived, documented and made available to the public.
VPT in November will host story-collecting events across the state for veterans unable to access the internet. The station is conducting the project in conjunction with other public television stations across the country.
"This outreach side of it is so interesting because it lets people do something firsthand with their own stories," Curran says.
Veterans can upload pictures from the time, and VPT is also encouraging men and women with stories from the homefront to contribute their experiences. Curran says the project is aimed at raising awareness about the war's impact on Vermont by forging a vast database of stories. Grant-funded workshops for teachers, Curran says, will spread the histories through Vermont classrooms.
"We're trying to do things now that we wouldn't have dreamed of years ago in great part because of what viewers and users of new media want now," Curran says. "We're changing. And the war project is great opportunity to test things."
One offshoot of the project is the creation of an online database with the 43,823 names of Vermont veterans from World War II. Clayton Clark, director of veterans services for the Vermont Office of Veterans Affairs, says the database will aid his own department's efforts to assist veterans seeking services.
The database also will offer Vermont families a convenient way to track the exploits of their matriarchs and patriarchs.
"Family members who don't really know a whole lot about grandma or grandpa are going to be able to look at that, see if they're a veteran, that will help get them started if should want to keep looking for other records."
Clark says the project will spotlight he considerable contributions of native Vermonters to the deadliest, and perhaps most consequential, war in the history of the world.
"It's good for people from all periods of service to see that their sacrifice is appreciated and so I do think it's important," Clark says.
Given World War II veterans' previous reluctance to bare their hearts, Clark says, it's important to document their stories now.
"Every generation is different," he says. "For the World War II-era generation, it really did take a lifetime of reflection before they were ready to open up."
Vermont Public Television will air "The War" Sept. 23 through 26 and Sept. 30 through Oct. 2 at 8 p.m. The station will feature late-evening and weekend rebroadcasts and in October the film will air again in weekly installments.
VPT representatives will be on hand at Norwich this weekend for a 12:30 p.m. sneak preview of the "The War." The exclusive preview is part of a day of World War II-related activities. At 10 a.m. on Sunday, Norwich will host a public screening of "The Last Ridge: The Inspiring Battles of the 10th Mountain Division" at the university's museum. Brooks, a Vermont native featured in the film, will lead a discussion of the documentary along with the film's producer.
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