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The Veterans History Project
By Rae A. Eastman
There is a truly astonishing project going on in Dalton — collecting the stories of local veterans and submitting them to the Library of Congress.
In 2004, Dalton Council on Aging (COA) Director Sue Jacobs attended a workshop on the Veterans History Project and later shared the information with the COA board members. The next summer, COA Board member Richard Nicholas expressed interest in working on the project. That October Jacobs filed the application necessary to be certified by the Library of Congress as an official Partner of the Veterans History Project. Among the many stringent requirements for documentation, logging, training etc. – was a commitment to interview at least 25 veterans a year.
Late in 2005, Dalton was accepted, and Nicholas agreed to be project producer and established a collaborative arrangement with John Ostresh, who became project director. Jacobs then recruited seven volunteers to carry out the project, who, in turn, worked with the Dalton Community Cable Associates, who agreed that the local studio could be used for taping the interviews.
On display at the TV station are photos of the men interviewed as they are now and as jaunty young men during World War II. “They were 17 and 18 year olds,” said Nicholas, “coming from such a different era — the end of the Depression. Many had never been off the farm and here they were in a foreign country and as one said, 'I saw my first dead body.”
Nicholas, retired Dalton Chief of Police, had been reluctant to take on the job knowing how arduous it would be. But one day he was serving as an honor guard at a veteran’s funeral when he overheard two of the daughters talking, clearly unaware of their father’s wartime experiences. Then he knew he had to sign on to do what he could to preserve this special heritage.
“It’s often hard for the men to talk about the war; some never do,” says Tom Murray, one of the current volunteer interviewers and himself a Vietnam veteran. “We hear the most amazing stories. When we give their families a DVD of an interview (and we always do), it is often the first they learn of their loved one’s experiences, and their feelings about them.”
Using tact and empathy, the interviewers, Murray and Tyrone Belanger from Lanesboro, who is also a Vietnam veteran, draw the men out, meeting with them twice before the actual interview. They put in an average of 10 hours for each interview as well as preparatory work at home. The interviewers try to get a picture of the veteran’s entire life before focusing in on the war years. Veterans interviewed thus far have ranged in age from 76 to 95.
A review of one sample DVD of excerpts from eight interviews shows the factual recall the men have demonstrated is remarkable in its specificity. One example: “We could see the Japanese suicide plane diving at us. That pilot had one minute and a half to live. The plane hit the water at just this angle (he shows a snapshot), landing right beside us, breaking open the side of the ship. But before it sank, I was able to get down to my locker and managed to find and bring up this precious gift from my mother. She had said: ‘If you ever need something, use this,’ and, smiling, he dug out of his pocket and held up a silver dollar dated 1901.”
The support team includes two “loggers,” Mary Lamke and Chris Faye, who, according to strict guidelines, painstakingly record minute to minute the times on the tape to enable the Library of Congress to annotate each film for purpose of reference. Tom Fenn is the Dalton Community Cable Associates engineer who converts the interviews into film.
Each veteran is asked how these experiences affected the rest of their lives. Some said that the discipline they learned had a lasting effect; one said “Sometimes you just don’t believe you can do it, but if you have to, you can.”
The team has done such an exemplary job capturing these war memories that the Library of Congress put 27 of their 46 interviews on the internet: www.loc.gov/vets. They can also be viewed in Berkshire County on Northern Berkshire Community TV, WilliNet, Pittsfield Community TV, and Community Television for the Southern Berkshires.
The people involved in the Dalton project are ever on the alert to find WWII veterans from the county to interview. They have completed 46 and there are 20 more men on the waiting list. They are focusing on WWII since statistics indicate that at least 1,000 of these veterans die each day (many think this estimate is too low.) Indeed, four of their own interviewees have died since the project began. Being a veteran does not necessarily mean combat duty; as one put it: “It takes 100 people behind the lines to put one soldier in combat.” The Project also interviews people who played a supportive role in WWII.
Most of the veterans interviewed, who still drop in to say hello, tell the volunteers they are proud to be memorialized for all time in the Library of Congress, in their family’s archives, and on the Library’s website. This is the volunteers' reward for the long, hard hours they have put into the project.
Rae A. Eastman is a volunteer with Berkshire Talking Chronicle, and the retired Sheffield Council on Aging Director.