Shoutout to the Veterans!

So I am thrilled to announce that the New York Public Library's Veterans Oral History Project is truly taking off! According to Nick, we have many veterans calling to set up interviews and I now have a backlog of interviews to listen to and get ready to send off to the Library of Congress. It's great to be an integral part of the project because I really feel like I'm taking it under my wing. I'm so proud of it, I'm dedicating a whole post to it so you need to check it out!

As I sort of mentioned in an earlier post, we had a lot of success last Wednesday at the VA Medical Center in the Bronx. I had two interviews, Emily (another NYPL employee) had two, and Evelyn (a librarian in the Bronx) had three. I also interviewed our first female veteran and I'm so glad we have women veterans represented. The female veteran I interviewed, LaTanga Blair, actually was inducted in the Veterans Hall of Fame. She was fantastic and I'm so happy she was willing to share her story. Hopefully, her audio will be on the webpage soon!

So I encourage you to vist the page and check out some of the veterans. If you'd like to hear my voice, you can watch Gerald Brown's interview. My personal favorite is Ralph Stern's: he was part of the group who stormed into France twenty days after D-Day. And, while Denny Meyer's is long, I was actually a part of the interview group. We interviewed him on my first day at NYPL; I truly was thrown into the project.

As you can probably tell, I'm really jazzed about this project. I think the Library of Congress was smart to start an oral history collection because these stories are so important. After spending hours listening to these veterans, I feel like I have a better perspective into war. While we may not agree on the wars the United States took part in, we can still appreciate what our veterans have done for us and for the United States. I also have learned more about war than I could have through classes and textbooks. They aren't afraid to be blunt and that really enhances their interviews.