EXCHANGE: Students recording memories of veterans
(AP) — Some veterans never talk about their experiences of war.
The stories also can be worth recording, preserving the words of those who witnessed and experienced war.
Middle-school students are learning how to interview veterans in a La Salle Public Library program.
By early June, students began recording video interviews with veterans.
Christie plans to interview her grandfather, Rich Ricci, who was stationed overseas in 1968-69 as a ground radio operator at Udorn Air Force base in Thailand during the Vietnam War.
Bureau County Historical Society Museum and Library made audio recordings of World War II veterans in the early 1990s, generating 104 interviews on cassette tape and indexed for searching, said curator David Gugerty.
The Mendota Museum and Historical Society also has an ongoing project to record video interviews of veterans.
The museum gains interviews as veterans grant them, and shows finished videos during veterans programs, said Dar Wujek, executive director of the museum.
"For years he never really talked about his experience in the Navy but in the last few years, with grandkids and great-grandkids, he agreed to talk about it," Dar Wujek said.
Chris Stamberger, a Mendota museum volunteer from LaMoille, has conducted interviews and recorded video for about a dozen veterans.