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more photosJinny Collins Cooper of Bend’s Daughters of the American Revolution chapter interviews veteran Ron Deady at his Bend home last week. Local volunteers have interviewed about 75 local veterans and others who assisted in war efforts.
Rob Kerr / The Bulletin
Turning their pasts into history
Local veterans are taking part in a national project to preserve their war stories
By Erin Golden / The Bulletin
Published: November 11. 2009 4:00AM PSTThere are times when Jinny Collins Cooper has to turn off her tape recorder in the middle of interviews with local veterans and let them cry.
Some of the approximately 60 men and women she’s interviewed over the last five years are happy to talk until the tape runs out. Others nervously crack jokes and are hesitant to get into the details of their wartime experiences. In some cases, as they recall vivid memories of combat scenes or the names of fallen friends, emotions can run high.
“There are extraordinary occurrences where people who have never spoken of the war before will break down and hug me and thank me, and once the tap opens it’s like they can’t stop,” she said.
In hours of conversations at kitchen tables and in living rooms, Collins Cooper and a handful of other volunteers with the Bend chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution are working to gather and preserve the stories of local veterans and others who have been touched by war.
Tapes and transcripts from the interviews, along with photos and other documents, are sent to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., where they are digitized and archived along with thousands of other entries from around the country.
The Veterans History Project, which began in 2000, is an effort to preserve the stories of people who have served in conflicts ranging from World War I to Afghanistan and Iraq. So far, the local volunteers have interviewed about 75 people and have nearly 30 others on their to-do lists.
The group has interviewed Central Oregon veterans from the wars in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, but the majority of the interview subjects served in World War II, said Marilyn Jole-Spiegel, the coordinator of the local Veterans History Project.
“Right now we’re working very hard, putting most of our time and energy into our World War II veterans because we’re losing so many every day,” she said.
Collins Cooper said many of the interviews stick with her, even years after she’s completed them.
One World War II veteran in his 80s shocked her with a story of being in an airplane that came under enemy fire in Germany. As the plane was hit over and over again, the man moved out of his seat to ensure that the plane’s bomb door was closed. When he turned around, there was a huge hole where his seat had been. Another veteran recalled how he helped rescue hundreds of Americans from a Japanese prison camp.
Lorin Myring, 84, of Bend, told Collins Cooper about how he landed at Iwo Jima with the first wave of Marines and fought for days as Americans died around him. He said he often shares his stories with students, veterans and other groups and was glad to participate in the project because he wants others to understand what happened in the war.
“These kids don’t know, they have no clue what it was like,” he said. “It was really something bad. ... We lost more men on battle of Iwo Jima than we have in five years of war (in Iraq and Afghanistan).”
Bend resident Jack Cook, 85, who flew B-24 bombers for the Army Air Corps in World War II, shared stories of bombing missions in the South Pacific — from encountering snakes in the jungle to flying over Hiroshima and Nagasaki shortly after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on both Japanese cities.
Cook said he’s not sure if people will find his stories valuable in the future, but he’s proud to have served.
“When my co-pilot and I were flying back from overseas at the end of the war, we were chatting about our experience and he said, ‘Would you go through it again?’” Cook recalled. “I said, ‘No, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for a million bucks.’ It’s an experience that will be in my memory for as long as I live.”
The volunteers have also interviewed some people who didn’t serve in the military but supported the war effort, including 85-year-old Jane Schroeder, who helped build airplanes at a factory in Oklahoma. She worked as a riveter, fastening together pieces of metal with metal bolts.
“I fell in the classification today that’s referred to as Rosie the Riveter, only my name wasn’t Rosie,” she said.
Schroeder said she’s happy to be part of the project because she wants people to know that women played a big role in World War II and other conflicts.
“I think there are people that live right here in Redmond, Oregon, that don’t know what a riveter is,” she said. “I think there are people here that think of the war effort as a man’s world, but today it’s a man’s and woman’s world.”
Collins Cooper said her group is still looking for more veterans to interview because each person provides a different perspective on some of the country’s most important events.
“They all have great stories to tell,” she said.
Erin Golden can be reached at 541-617-7837 or at egolden@bendbulletin.com.
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