Dold Uses Lake Forest Stop to Promote Oral History Project for Veterans

Every person who has worn the uniform of the U.S. military has a story to tell.

brought an effort by the Library of Congress to earlier this week to make sure those stories are heard and logged. 

The Library of Congress has launched a project to obtain video oral histories and other original communications from veterans as part of a permanent collection. Dold came to on Nov. 7 to enlist support. 

“We just lost our last veteran of World War I and 1,500 World War II veterans are dying every day,” Dold said. “Everyone has a story to tell. We want to use this as a teaching tool for years to come.” 

A group of seven veterans including American Legion Post Commander of Lake Forest, Richard Small of Highland Park, Bud Turner of Lake Forest and Larry Pasquesi of Deerfield shared some experiences, and told Dold the difficulties they will have eliciting stories from many who served. 

“For some of them it’s still too painful,” Small said. “They just don’t want to talk about it after all this time.”

Phil Hartung of Lake Forest offered a solution. He explained some people are reluctant to tell stories at first, but he has been successful getting them to talk once a relationship is developed. 

“I know someone who was at Pearl Harbor (when the Japanese attacked) and he was the only one of 178 to survive," Hartung said. "He was a B-17 tail gunner and had some stories to tell once he loosened up.” 

Marks recalled a friend, Phil Czarnecki of Virginia, who served with him in Vietnam. The story of Czarnecki’s father and uncle is one he shared. 

“His dad and uncle were both on the Arizona,” Marks said of the ship that Japanese planes sank on Dec. 7, 1941. “His dad went to church (that morning) and lived.” 

Turner offered to dig into the Lake Forest American Legion archives to find stories he had written for the Post newsletter. He was concerned some of the stories he wrote were second hand.

“What about the quotes,” he asked Dold? 

“Direct quotations work,” Dold said.

Dold also offered to have the Library of Congress hold the stories for a specified period of time. “We can have them embargoed for a number of years if that is their wish,”  he said.

Dold had his own story to tell. His uncle, Robert Shumaker of Fairfax, Va., was the first pilot shot down by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam war. “He’s the one who named it the Hanoi Hilton,” Dold said of the jail where Americans were held, including former presidential candidate John McCann. 

Shumaker was a prisoner at the same time as McCain (R-AZ). Dold told how the men were held in solitary confinement and communicated with a code of making sounds on the walls. “The tapping system kept them sane,” Dold said. 

Small wants to take the education project out to the public as well as having it at the Library of Congress. He believes a greater awareness of the meaning of Veterans Day, Memorial Day and other holidays are important.

 “Too many young people look at Veterans Day as a day off,” Small said. “They look at it as a three-day weekend. They should be aware of what it means whether it’s Veterans Day or Martin Luther King Day.”