Wisconsin Veterans Museum telling history of wars, one story at a time

Madison — Adam Holton's memories of Iraq are still fresh, even though it's been nine years since he served as commander of a Marine Reserves company.
He vividly remembers the days during Golf Company's 2004-'05 Iraq deployment when five of his Marines were mortally wounded, and he recalls the tedium and excitement of living in a war zone. Holton wanted his memories, and those of his men, preserved for posterity.

Because as long as he remembers his five fallen comrades, others will, too.
"Keeping their memories alive is really important to us," Holton said.

That's why Holton participated in the Wisconsin Veterans Museum's oral history project. More than 1,800 oral histories of Wisconsin veterans, dating back to the program's start in 1994, are on cassette tapes, CDs and now digital recordings.

The museum hired its first full-time oral historian in 2011 for a two-year term. The position becomes permanent later this summer, though it will no longer be full-time, according to Museum Director Michael Telzrow.

Adam Holton with his family on the day he deployed in June 2004. Holton‘s memories of Iraq are fresh, even though it’s been nine years since he served as commander of a Marine Reserves company.

Oral historian Molly Graham expanded the program by training people at the Veterans Home in King, hospitals and local military history groups to record oral histories. She also started an ambitious project to digitize all of the recordings, many of which are on cassette, with the goal of eventually offering oral histories online.

The museum now has 1,857 oral histories of veterans, with more added weekly.
"It's a time capsule of their lives, and it's the most important and unique way to remember people's lives," said Graham, 28, a Maine native. "I think of the soldiers' grandchildren or great-grandchildren someday sitting down and hitting 'play.'"

While diaries are integral to historians, oral histories provide a much richer perspective because they're conversations and not one-sided reflections written down in journals. The project has focused on World War II veterans first because their ranks are thinning rapidly, but all Wisconsin veterans are welcome to participate.
"Once we lose someone, we lose their ability to share their stories," Graham said.
Holton heard of the oral history project from one of the Marines he served with in Iraq. In December he met with Rick Berry, a Vietnam veteran and volunteer oral historian. They talked for 71/2 hours over two sessions, with the talk ranging from Holton's recollections of the tragedy of losing a comrade to the dark humor of war.
Holton, 42, a Milwaukee native who lives in Oconomowoc, recalled moving his unit into new quarters in a violent area of Anbar Province where they were hit by mortars daily for several weeks. The austere conditions meant the Marines did not have showers, hot food or electricity.
Eventually they managed to get power, and soon they had hooked up a large-screen TV and satellite dish so they could watch sports and movies when they weren't patrolling. Though they continued to look for the people shooting mortars at them every day, it wasn't until their satellite dish was knocked out by a blast that they soon found the perpetrators.
"We thought it was more than coincidental that it wasn't until they got our satellite TV that we got them," said Holton, a human resources manager for GE Healthcare.
Berry, 68, estimates he's done about 50 oral history interviews, including Holton's. An Army helicopter pilot in Vietnam in 1967 and '68, Berry began volunteering at the veterans museum after retiring from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Using a template developed by Graham, Berry asks open-ended questions and lets the veteran talk, occasionally asking follow-up questions. Many veterans say they quickly forget about the microphone.
"One of the things that's surprising or not surprising is how focused the memory appears to be with actual combat experience. They might have trouble remembering the date or where they were located, but when they describe the actual combat their memory is quite acute," said Berry, of Madison.
Graham has done more than 30 interviews with veterans, with the bulk of her time spent on digitizing and curating the collection as well as training around 50 people — a dozen as interviewers and the rest who transcribe and edit recordings for clarity. All interviews are available to the public — by contacting the museum — though only about half of the collection so far has been transcribed, cataloged and made searchable by hometown, conflict and veteran's name.
Earlier this month Graham left her job as oral historian at the veterans museum because, though the position will be permanent, it will not be full-time. Telzrow said the museum plans to fill the oral historian position by late summer.
Graham traveled from Eau Claire to Janesville and La Crosse to Milwaukee and interviewed veterans of all conflicts since World War II as well as female Army nurses and a 102-year-old woman who served in the Navy.
Though their experiences were different, in many ways combat veterans shared similar emotions, whether the conflict was in the jungles of the Pacific or Vietnam or the deserts of North Africa and Iraq. But Graham noticed that while World War II veterans tend to think of their experience as no big deal, perhaps because they were among 16 million who fought, post-9-11 veterans, who are used to social media, are very comfortable telling their stories.
Many World War II veterans never talked about themselves, and when they show up for oral history interviews, it's sometimes difficult to get them to open up, Graham said.
"I was talking to a veteran whose ship had been torpedoed and I asked him what it was like. He said — wet. I said, 'No, really, what was it like' and he finally shared that he was scared," Graham said.
It was the same for Vietnam veterans, though for a different reason.
"A lot of the guys from Vietnam simply didn't talk about their experience," Berry said, "because it wasn't socially correct to talk about it."
The interviews are often emotional — not just for the veteran but also for the interviewers.
That's why Berry often concludes his interviews with a hug.
On the Web
More information about the Wisconsin Veterans Museum oral history project

By Meg Jones of the Journal Sentinel