Veterans History Project: Illuminating the Future by Sharing the Past

Today’s post is by Veterans History Project (VHP) Liaison Specialist Lisa A. Taylor who works in the John Adams Building. With the Project since 2009, Lisa is on the team responsible for program communication and coordination. Among other duties, she writes and edits materials for publication and works with local and national organizations and Congressional offices to encourage veterans to tell their stories and to inspire interviewers to record them.

We are highlighting the VHP today to remind our readers to collect the stories of our veterans. 

According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, more than 20 million war veterans live in the United States. In October of 2000, Congress created the Veterans History Project (VHP) of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress (Public Law 106-380). VHP’s mission is to collect, preserve and make accessible the wartime stories ofAmerica’s veterans so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of war. These first-person accounts are a rich supplement to historical texts and an invaluable resource for researchers, educators, the general public and the veterans’ families.

We encourage war veterans, their families, veterans groups, communities and students to record and donate veterans’ interviews, along with any original photographs, diaries, letters, maps and other wartime documents, to the Library of Congress where they are housed in the American Folklife Center in perpetuity.

VHP has created very easy-to-follow forms, instructional materials and a great website that walks anyone—from teenagers to the elderly—through the process. The homepage includes a 15-minute video featuring PBS Documentarian Ken Burns who offers helpful tips for conducting a good interview.

Women’s Army Corps (WACS) take oath on Capitol steps . Photograph from Harris & Ewing

To date, volunteer contributors have recorded and submitted more than 85,000 personal recollections to VHP, making it the largest oral history collection in the United States. These include the remembrances of male and female veterans from all 50 states and the U.S. territories who served during World War I through today’s conflicts, in all branches of the U.S. military. Approximately 12,500 stories have been digitized and are also accessible on the searchable database found on our website.

The Project has been a huge success, thanks to a vast network of individual and organizational volunteers from across the nation that collect these priceless, first-hand accounts from the men and women who served our nation during wartime. It doesn’t matter what role they played or what rank they were, we want every veteran’s story, even if they did not see combat. It does not matter if you were a cook, secretary, nurse, photographer, submariner, artist, pilot or commanding officer. If you wore a U.S. military uniform and are no longer serving, we want to hear from you!

 

Spending a Summer in D.C.

 Today’s post is by 2012 Junior Fellow Brian Horowitz of  the University of Maryland, College Park. This is Brian’s third year with us (He is continuing his work on the Library’s large collection of Army Technical and Field Manuals). You can read about his work in  Art of War…and of Sandwich Making and Stumbled upon in the …

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Jeanne Guillemin’s “American Anthrax”- A Book Talk

In the wake of the 2001 September 11 al Qaeda attacks on the U.S., five anonymous letters containing a deadly strain of anthrax (Bacillus anthracis) were mailed via the U.S. Postal Service to major media outlets in Florida and New York, and to the U.S. Senate in Washington, D.C. This bioterrorist attack killed 5 people: …

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Five Questions (The Intern Edition): Brian Horowitz

1. What is your background?  I hail from Silver Spring, Maryland, about fifteen miles away from the Library. I currently attend Montgomery College where I am studying Psychology and Neuroscience. Before starting college I had the opportunity to live in Israel where I studied Jewish texts such as the Talmud. It was a once in …

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Pic of the Week: Show and Tell

Today’s Pic of the Week shows the Division’s two Junior Fellows, Laura Beth Jackson and Brian Horowitz, at the annual event the Library holds where the Junior Fellows showcase their projects. Laura Beth’s project was about the Library’s materials from the National Recovery Administration, and her exhibit included two of the Codes of Fair Competition …

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The Art of War…and of Sandwich Making

We have deemed the entire month of August this year ”Intern Month” at Inside Adams, which means we are featuring posts written by and about our summer interns.  Today’s post is by Brian Horowitz of Montgomery College in Maryland. Brian was with us last year and wrote the post  Stumbled Upon in the Stacks about Brevet Major Alfred Mordecai. He is …

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Civil War Aeronautics

Will Lieut. Gen. Scott please see Professor Lowe once more about his balloon? This quote comes from a note that President Lincoln wrote to General Scott on July 25, 1861. Thaddeus Sobieski Coulincourt Lowe (Prof. T.S.C. Lowe) was an expert balloonist and would become the Chief Aeronaut for the United States Government during the Civil …

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World War II ‘Scientific Manpower’

K-rations, better night vision binoculars, and synthetic rubber are just a few examples of innovations resulted from scientific research during World War II.  The story of science during World War II is one of partnerships and prolific research. On June 28, 1941, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8807which established the Office of Scientific Research and …

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