Almaden Resident
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Local students preserve veterans' tales on film
By Eli Segall
With each passing Veterans Day, the stories and memories of the nation's veterans fade into history. Tales from the front lines, of both great victory and unspeakable pain, are forgotten as the stories are buried with the ones who lived them.
Yet a group of local teenagers is making sure veterans' legacies live on.
San Jose-based Stories of Service matches local high school students with Bay Area veterans. Students interview and digitally record soldiers' experiences fighting overseas. The students then turn these interviews into online streaming movies, which can be viewed on the Stories website.
Stories of Service will show these movies on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, at San Jose City Hall. This is the first year the program is partnering with other organizations to go nationwide, with Santa Clara County students serving as role models for students in other communities.
"It's kind of reinventing the oral history," said Warren Hegg, who founded the group in 1998. "We bring the greatest generation together with the latest generation."
Hegg said the group is actively recruiting new teens to participate in the program, aiming for students from Leland and Pioneer high schools.
Chelsea Mao, a Leland High School junior, is one project participant. Most students interview World War II veterans, but Chelsea, 15, interviewed the widow of a soldier killed two years ago in Iraq.
Chelsea learned that the man had planned a visit to his then-pregnant wife. However, the trip was delayed, and he was sent on another mission, where he was killed.
She gave birth two weeks later.
"It really affected me," Chelsea said. "Before the interview, the war in Iraq was just people fighting, nothing more. But once I heard her story, that made it personal."
Chelsea is not the only student to have gained a new perspective on war. Kartik Venkatraman, a Harker School sophomore, joined Stories of Service last year. He interviewed Bernard "Rusty" Lewis, a Cupertino resident and World War II fighter pilot.
Lewis was flying his 22nd mission of the war when he was shot down over Germany. He was captured and held for six months in a German prisoner-of-war camp. To make matters worse, his capture occurred near the end of the war when German supplies were running low. Lewis was rarely given food, but was saved when the Soviet Union liberated his camp. He was 21 years old at the time.
"Most people learn about World War II in history books and just read the facts of what happened," Kartik said. "These people, they give you the emotions of the soldiers who were there."
Stories of Service is part of Digital Clubhouse Network, or DCN, a New York-based nonprofit group. DCN offers a host of technology-based programs that bring children closer to their communities, and communities closer to each other. Besides chronicling veterans' stories, videos are made documenting African-American history, children with serious illnesses and how to cope with a death in the family.
Students document the entire life of the veteran, from early childhood to their military service and through their post-war life. Students then use the software program Adobe Premiere to make the movie itself. Stories of Service is located at San José History Park on Senter Road, where teens may use the computer lab for the movies. Here, they have access to needed software and guidance from Stories' staff.
The process of making short films teaches students important practical skills, too. Sareena Avadhany, a junior at San Jose High Academy, said she has significantly improved her computer abilities since joining Stories of Service.
"I didn't know anything about Adobe. I spent a lot of sleepless nights working on these movies," Sareena said, "but it's gotten a lot better. I can even help new volunteers now."
The group is supported by a host of companies and organizations. This year alone, the History Channel, the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and Youth Service America--the country's largest network of youth volunteers--are helping to promote Stories of Service and recruit more teens and veterans. History Channel can reach 100,000 teachers through its program.
Local heavyweights have also stepped in. Hewlett-Packard has agreed to donate equipment to strengthen the group's technology, and The Morgan Family Foundation, which is Applied Material's nonprofit wing, will contribute $75,000 over the next three years.
Preserving the stories of American veterans is reaching a critical point. Hegg said World War II veterans are dying at a rate of 2,000 per day. As they reach their mid- to late-80s, they often suffer debilitating diseases such as Alzheimer's.
Juanita Harris realizes the need to preserve this history all too well. Her husband, Stanley Harris, was as a member of the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II, an all-black unit of fighter pilots based in Tuskegee, Ala. He died in 2001, but was one of the first interviewees for Stories of Service.
"This needs to be done for future generations," said Harris, who lives in Sunnyvale. "If we don't get these stories down, there won't be anyone left to tell them."
San Jose City Hall is located at 200 E. Santa Clara St. The Veterans Day event starts at 3 p.m.
For more information, visit www.stories-of-service.org.
