March 24, 2004
Vets share war stories
Students interview veterans for Library of Congress history project
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Reaching across generations, students in Traverse City Central High School's Inter Disciplinary Studies program spent Friday with 31 area veterans.
The tenth-grade students welcomed the veterans, who fought in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, escorting them to the school in a fleet of Cadillacs donated for the occasion. A color guard and school officials greeted each veteran as they entered the school.
In addition, student drummers played a march and students lined the halls, clapping and cheering, as veterans and their assigned student buddy walked two long hallways to the IDS classrooms.
After a welcoming ceremony featuring songs and an original poem by Adam Wurm, students and the veterans socialized and got acquainted. Then student teams interviewed each veteran about his or her wartime experiences and memories. The students videotaped the hour-long interviews and the tapes will be included in the nationwide Veterans History Project, an initiative by the Library of Congress to preserve this slice of history.
"It is important to share these stories," said Jackie Miller of Grawn, a retired Army staff sergeant who served in both Korea and Vietnam.
Miller, whose piercing eyes, crisp dress uniform and proud posture belied his years, occasionally speaks to classrooms in the area about his war experiences. He provides students with first-hand accounts of what are usually brief passages in their history books.
"Like the Korean War has two or three paragraphs in a textbook and I spend a 45-minute class discussing it," Miller added. "This week I spoke to 300 ninth graders at East Junior High."
The first-hand accounts brought history to life for the students.
"It's really got me to think about all the veterans, I never noticed them before but now I know their stories," said Lucas Craig, a tenth-grade IDS student. "I guess I didn't know much about any of the wars, just the big details and now I know the small details."
"You actually hear the stories, instead of just hearing who the leaders of the war are," agreed Emily Bagley, also a tenth-grade IDS student.
According to the Library of Congress' American Folklife Center, the sponsor of the Veterans History Project, an estimated 1,700 World War II era veterans die every day. A treasure-trove of history is being lost with them and the project is geared to capturing on film the memories of the remaining veterans, as well as veterans of the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
"We know there is nothing like your experiences," Mike McManus, a history teacher in the IDS program, told participating veterans. "You're going to reach out and tell stories they've never heard in their lives; you've already done tremendous things for this country but you're going to do a tremendous service for the young people."
McManus and three other participating teachers - Regina Allman, Kim Fleming and Virginia Tegel - spearheaded the project. Susan McQuaid, director of volunteer partnerships with the United Way of Northwest Michigan, helped recruit the participating veterans.
The teachers rounded up video cameras from any source they could for the project, scouring the school for every available unit. McManus noted that West High School also loaned equipment for the day. The taped interviews will also be given to the veterans.
"These interviews are powerful, just powerful," McManus noted. "These veterans are telling stories as primary sources of information, it hasn't been interpreted by anybody."
"My students have covered all this material, we've read it in books and watched it in movies, but this brings it to life," he added.