Preserving faces, tales of our veterans
Memorial Day: ‘This is not whether you were shot at, or whether you were a war hero. It’s answering your country’s call when your country needed you.’
Kate Kelly will tell you she is not the story here. She insists the veterans — 93 and counting — whose oral histories she has documented are the stars of the show. Being anointed Mother of the Modern Memorial Day is unlikely to be the highlight of her holiday.
But hey, facts are facts. Here’s one: Kelly and her husband, Kevin, were still settling into Pleasanton’s Stoneridge Creek senior living community when they attended a Veterans Day program. Vets were asked to raise their hands by branch — Navy, Army, Marines, Air Force. “I realized, that’s a lot of hands,” Kelly, 66, said.
The show of hands, plus a display of veterans-themed storyboards in the community center, inspired her to “get some of these stories.” Another fact: Three years later, Kelly
has several meticulously organized binders for her efforts. In compiling the personal stories of veterans in her community — she calls the project Stoneridge Creek Served — she has put a twist on the concept of Memorial Day.
Unofficially observed for more than a century, Memorial Day became a federal holiday in 1971, honoring those who died while serving in our military. Forty-six years after the holiday’s official designation and nearly 77 years after V-J Day, those who memorialized service members killed in World War II are themselves being memorialized. Same with the Korean War, which ended nearly 64 years ago. The United States pulled out of Vietnam 42 years ago, if you can believe that.
By compiling these oral histories, which include photos, documents and signed letters from U.S. presidents, Kelly, the daughter of a career Navy officer, is essentially rebranding Memorial Day. It’s not just names and faces she wants preserved in our national mind’s eye, but essential chunks of our history and the tenor of those times. Which is why she includes in each veteran’s history “what the fashion was like. What were the movies of that period?” she asked. “What books were people reading? Who were the stars? What were cars like?”
Some veterans Kelly runs across consider their service mundane, unimportant. They don’t get a pass. The more details and slices of life the better.
“That’s what I face all the time with my boys,” she said. “They feel that if they didn’t undergo something horrendous, something traumatic, that they didn’t do anything. This is not about whether you were in combat. This is not whether you were shot at, or whether you were a war hero. It’s answering your country’s call when your country needed you.”
In the case of William Crain, 87, he felt the call so strongly that he joined the Army Air Forces (later the U.S. Air Force) the day after his high school graduation in 1947. A teenager who had “never been outside Duluth, Minnesota,” he soon found himself in Europe and North Africa, places “I had studied in a geography book in grade school or high school.”
“I think it’ll be interesting to my children,” he said of his binder. “My dad was in World War I. I never knew a thing about what he did. He just never talked about it, and we never asked questions.”
Dick Sovish, 92, served in the Army in World War II. “You have to tell the children what happened in World War II,” he said, “what the war was like so they know what their freedom is. That’s the way I feel.”
Phil Wire, 90, served on the USS Independence from 1944 to 1946 and lauds the project, given that “a lot of people today don’t know anything about World War II. So it’s nice that they’re doing it.”
Interestingly, the reluctance of Wire and Crain’s father to talk about their experiences is partially responsible for the history void that Kelly is trying to fill.
“I guess during my marriage I never talked much about it,” Wire said. “There were other things going on. There didn’t seem to be any interest.”
Margaret (Peg) Crystal, 95, who taught instrument flight procedure to American, French and British student pilots during World War II, has her doubts.
“It’s interesting to preserve this,” she said, adding with a laugh, “though I can’t say that my kids ask me very many questions.”
Kelly is undeterred. She started interviewing the World War II veterans “because they’re our oldest.” She now is focusing on Korean War vets. There are Cold War and Vietnam War veterans at Stoneridge Creek as well. Kelly says more than 20 percent of residents there served in the military.
“There’s so much in these binders that you’ll never read in history books,” she said. “Every single person in there has his own unique view of those times. And those times are gone. So if we don’t (document) them, they’ll always be gone.”