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Quinn McCourt
Youth preserve stories of World War II veterans
By Amy Jenkins
In an effort to preserve the stories of World War II veterans, the Digital Clubhouse Network in Sunnyvale is using the digital technology expertise of young people and the storytelling of veterans to create short multimedia movies on the computer.
The World War II Memories Project began at the Digital Clubhouse Network in 1998 because grandfathers weren't telling their children, grandchildren or other family members about many of their war experiences, said Mary Ellen Locke, a Digital Clubhouse board member.
Lu Zentner, one of the founders of the project, added that if these stories were not put into digital form now, they would be lost forever because World War II veterans are dying at a rate of about 5,000 per month throughout the United States. So far, more than 50 stories told by veterans, women and people living in the 1940s have been preserved in the three- to five-minute movies.
Young people ages 15 to 21--called Digitally Abled Producers--create a digital story using a veteran's voice and story, combined with photographs from the veteran's scrapbook, letters, memorabilia, video or photographs found on the Internet. Photographs are scanned into the computer and then the computer software, Adobe Photoshop and Premiere, are used to make a movie complete with audio and visual.
"In my story I was describing how it rained a lot in India and Burma while I was there during the war, but I didn't have photographs to illustrate this, so we used a satellite picture off the Internet to show this area under cloud cover," said Fred Stahl, who recently completed his digital story after working on it since March. "About 75 percent of the snapshots we used were saved by my wife during the war, and are 57 years old, but we combine the old and the new. I couldn't have put my story together this well without the clubhouse," he said.
Stahl got involved with the project because he wanted everyone to know how World War II changed people's lives forever and to let people know there was a war going on in India, Burma and China, and not just in Europe and the South Pacific.
"I can't wait until my wife sees the movie," he said.
The Digital Clubhouse Network invited veterans and the community to a showing of some of the digital movies in their facility in the Sunnyvale Town Center Mall, following the city council meeting on Nov. 13.
Members of this project, including 14-year-old Quinn McCourt, a freshman at Homestead High School, who is executive producer of the project, were invited to Washington, D.C., Nov. 6 through 11 to participate in a number of Veteran's Day events.
The Digital Clubhouse Network was asked by someone at the Library of Congress to teach its members about digital storytelling for the Veterans History Project they are working, which was announced on Veteran's Day, Zentner said. To make the project work, the goal is to acquire 90,000 community volunteers nationwide. The Library of Congress is interested in creating a lasting legacy of wartime experiences without using the traditional method of sitting in front of a camera and reading a story, he said.
"Snapshots and oral histories don't have the emotions that digital movies do," said Zentner, who was in World War II and used to be a photo historian.
When Digital Clubhouse members arrived in Washington, D.C., they shared their project with the World War II Memorial Commissions Offices, ,which is building a physical memorial to war veterans. They also met with the members of the Corporation for National Services, which is in charge of mobilizing young people and seniors to participate in documentation and preservation projects such as these.
The World War II Memories Project has also been chosen as a model project for a national movement called Service Learning, which allows young people to earn academic credit for participating in community projects. It is also a model for the Veteran's Association and caregivers who can benefit from learning about veteran's health-related issues that are revealed in the digital movies, Warren Hegg, co-founder of the Digital Clubhouse, said.
"The stories are never about violence," Hegg said. "They are about humanity and the fact that it is a different world now, after the war."
McCourt said the project has been the greatest experience he has ever had. "I've never done anything like it before, and I like personally finding out about people of that generation and what they went through," he said. "Other people my age don't know about World War II firsthand."
His mother, Shannon McCourt, said the project has taught her son leadership skills, how to help people, and has given him the chance to go to Washington, D.C., which will help in his aspiring career as a politician.
To participate in the World War II Project or learn more about the Digital Clubhouse Network, call 408.481.0880 or visit www.digiclub.org.
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
