Share Your Stories

Ken Burns' desire to create The War was driven by two troubling trends -- the rapid pace that World War II veterans are dying (1,000 a day) and the number of high school students who believe the United States fought with Germany during the Second World War. The War addresses both issues by capturing stories from the generation that fought and lived through World War II before they are lost to us forever.

CPTV invites you to share memories from World War II with future generations.

• StorySHARE
  
  
  Your story, video, or photos can be featured on this website. Our new story tool makes it easy to share your story. You can submit your story in writing or call it in over the phone. Connecticut Public Broadcasting will collect your stories until May 31, 2008.
  
  Whether you or a family member fought on the battlefront or felt the impact on the home front, your personal account is important. We hope that you will take some time to make your memories part of Connecticut's history.
  Share your Story Here.



• Veterans History Project
  If you have recorded an interview with a veteran or someone associated with the defense industry during World War II, you can submit it to the Library of Congress' Veterans History Project, a partner in The War outreach effort. The project website includes a downloadable field kit that provides detailed instructions on how to film and conduct an interview with World War II veterans which anyone is welcome to use. The Veterans History Project has a formal submission process for accepting videos, audio recordings, original photos and original letters



• Attend Our Workshop
  CPTV is planning a Veterans History Project workshop for the fall of 2007. Send us an e-mail if you're interested in participating.
  E-mail Jane Moreno at jmoreno@cptv.org or call 860-275-7345.

For inspiration, click to see the Veterans History Project's collection of video interviews with World War II veterans.

Many online resources are available to assist you with your story collection.

• Connecticut State Library
• National Archives
• VA Graves
• WNPR Podcasts
• PBS Links

• The Connecticut State Library holds a wealth of materials that pertain to Connecticut residents who served in the armed forces during World War II. Some of the categories are:

• Records of Those Who Served From Connecticut

• Records of the Military Department

• Gold Star Lists

• Records of Those From Connecticut Who Died in Service

• Veteran's Death Index

• Professional Researchers

• Should you remove photographs from old albums, such as black paper albums or self-stick albums? Should you convert old home movies on film to videotape? See what the experts at the National Archives have to say.

• Overview of military records available at the National Archives

• World War II records on U.S. Army enlistments, prisoners of war and Japanese-American relocation.

• Information regarding military personnel, health and medical records.

• Online Military Indexes for World War II including information on where to order records.

• U.S. Army Medal of Honor recipients listed by conflict and last name.

VA Graves

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) offers an online search tool for the burial sites of veterans interred in VA graves. Search for burial locations of veterans and their family members in VA National Cemeteries, state veterans cemeteries, various other military and Department of Interior cemeteries, and for veterans buried in private cemeteries when the grave is marked with a government grave marker.

WNPR Podcasts

• Where We Live: Linda Schwartz and Roger Johnson Discuss Veterans Affairs
  
  HARTFORD , CT (April 10, 2007) The terrible conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center have put veterans care in the American spotlight. Today, a look at how Connecticut vets are faring…
  
  Linda Schwartz, commissioner of the state Department of Veterans Affairs, recently said that 2,500 Connecticut veterans are facing a wait of up to two years for benefits through the VA medical centers in Newington and West Haven. And, she says, it could get worse as more troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan.
  
  Many of these troops will be in need of mental health services, one of the primary concerns of VAs around the nation, which are dealing with hundreds of thousands of cases of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. But the Connecticut Department of Veterans Affairs’ system does more than just care for those returning from current wars. It cares for many older veterans, who live at its Rocky Hill campus. That facility is in the middle of a $33 million dollar upgrade.
  
  Today on “Where We Live,” we'll continue our series of conversations with the heads of state departments. We'll be joined by Department of Veterans Affairs Commissioner Linda Schwartz and Roger Johnson, director of the Veterans Affairs’ Connecticut Healthcare System.
  
• Where We Live: Ken Burns on The War
  
  HARTFORD , CT (May 21, 2007) Over a 30-plus year career, Ken Burns has helped bring Americans closer to their past. With a unique and easily identifiable storytelling style, Burns has taken us on trips with Lewis and Clark and across the West and introduced us to the lesser-known sides of Mark Twain and Frank Lloyd Wright.
  
  In September, The War will premiere on PBS stations, including CPTV. It will prove a special challenge not only because of the scope of the global war, but also because of its familiarity through film, television and history books. The film has also proved controversial prompting protests from Hispanic groups who feel their story has not been accurately represented.
  
  Today on “Where We Live,” we'll talk with Ken Burns about The War . And, we'll talk with an historian who's been critical of Burns' exclusion of Latino voices, something PBS now says it will remedy.
  
• The Faith Middleton Show: Military Family Experiences
  
  HARTFORD , CT (March 14, 2007) Host Faith Middleton talks with military families in Connecticut and callers about how their experiences in coping when a loved one is deployed overseas.
  
• Where We Live : Storytellers on Storytelling
  
  HARTFORD , CT (April 4, 2007) – It's the first of four "StoryCorps Fridays" on “Where We Live” throughout April. We're celebrating the StoryCorps booth's arrival at the Old State House in Hartford with a series about the many ways in which we tell stories in our lives. One increasingly popular storytelling method is the memoir. It falls somewhere between a diary, an autobiography and a novel, and is used by writers, famous and not, to tell their stories.
  
  Many memoirs have become bestsellers – but they've also been savaged by the media as being too loose with the facts. The question is: if you're writing from your recollection of events, does it have to be all true? Can some accounts be enhanced, just like good storytellers have done through the ages? Last week, a dozen prominent authors of memoir gathered at Trinity College to discuss the growing genre of the memoir. Three of them stopped by WNPR to talk.
  
  Lucy Ferriss is interim director of the Creative Writing Program at Trinity College. She put together "Giving Voice: The Art of Memoir." Ferriss is the author of seven books, including “Nerves of the Heart” (2002), a finalist for the Connecticut Book Award. Her short fiction has received recognition from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Faulkner Society, the Fulbright Commission, and the George Bennett Fund, among others. She lives in Connecticut, where she is writer-in-residence at Trinity College.
  
  Mary-Ann Tirone Smith is the author of "Girls of Tender Age," an acclaimed memoir of life in Hartford. In “Girls of Tender Age,” Smith fully articulates with great humor and tenderness the wild jubilance of an extended French-Italian family struggling to survive in a post-World War II housing project in Hartford, Connecticut.
  
• Where We Live: The Life Review, Memoirs and Reminiscing
  
  HARTFORD , CT (April 6, 2007) The StoryCorps mobile booth has arrived at the Old State House in Hartford. WNPR and StoryCorps are giving our listeners a chance to tell their stories to the ones they love. Some will be shared on air, and all will be archived. It's a project meant to collect an oral history of America. So, here on “Where We Live,” we're celebrating this arrival, with a month of "StoryCorps Fridays." We'll be examining the art of the story – in all of its forms.
  
  Today, we invite two women who help elderly people tell their stories. Researchers say it's like "calisthenics for the brain" – evidence that pushing older people to reminisce keeps aging minds sharp.
  
  Our guests are Mary Alice Wolf,D. Ed., the director of the Institute of Gerontology http://www.sjc.edu/content.cfm/pageid/4949 at Saint Joseph College in West Hartford, and Mary Mitchell, a gerontologist who runs reminiscence sessions with the elderly.

PBS Links

• The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
  
  “The NewsHour” offers a classic tribute for veterans from the 2004 dedication of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.
  
• Now With Bill Moyers
  
  This episode of “Now” features a moving tribute to D-Day Veterans, along with oral histories and book excerpts.
  
• American Experience: War Letters
  
  Based on newly discovered personal correspondence from the Revolutionary War to the Gulf War, “War Letters” is based on the book by Andrew Carroll. It brings to life vivid eyewitness accounts of famous battles, intimate declarations of love and longing, poignant letters penned just before the writer was killed, and heartbreaking "Dear John" letters from home.
  
• American Experience
  
  An online map provides links to military museums and historical societies across the United States, including The Military Museum of Southern New England http://www.usmilitarymuseum.org/maingrp.htm in Danbury, Connecticut.