The Library of Congress gained at least 20 new contributors to its Veterans History Project after a training session Saturday morning in Little Rock.
The Veterans History Project, which began in 2000, aims to preserve history by recruiting volunteers to interview peace and wartime veterans. The interviews are recorded to create an oral history for the Library of Congress.
U.S. Rep. French Hill's office organized Saturday's training at the Cox Creative Center. There will be another training in October, and Hill said that as long as he is in office, he wants to continue having a couple of sessions each year.
Hill, a Republican from Little Rock, said he would participate in October's training because he wants to conduct some interviews for the project. He wants to interview his father, who fought in World War II and in the Korean War.
"What better part of history to document than our veterans?" Hill said.
Members of Hill's staff will help pair the interviewers with veterans and will assist people in mailing materials to the Library of Congress, Chloe Maxwell, special projects coordinator for Hill's office, told the group.
Hill said he wanted volunteers to focus especially on gathering stories from World War II and Korean War veterans because they are getting older.
There are almost 250,000 veterans in Arkansas, and about 8 percent, or just over 20,000, of those are Korean War veterans. World War II veterans represent just over 3 percent, nearly 9,000 people, according to data from the National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics.
There are about 1,000 Arkansas veterans who have their stories in the library, which is less than half a percent of the total number of Arkansan veterans, said Kathy Oliverio, director of military student success at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Oliverio led Saturday's training.
She said civilians who stayed in the United States and helped with war efforts also are eligible to be interviewed for the project. In addition to interview recordings, at least 20 pages of a memoir or journal or 10 pieces of art from the interview subject can be submitted, Oliverio said.
Interview recordings must be at least 30 minutes and are available to the public, Oliverio said. The information is stored at the Library of Congress, and a record is created online, according to instructions in the interview field kit.
Interviewers for the project must have finished the 10th grade.
One participant in Saturday's workshop, Roxanne Caldwell, said she wants to interview veterans because she did not get to hear her father's story before he died.
"That's what I regret -- not being able to get his story," she said.
Her father was in the Marines from 1967 to 1970, during the Vietnam War.
Caldwell got married to a veteran of the Iraq War, and her father died a month later, she said.
Her husband did two tours over four years.
"I just want to help veterans," Caldwell said. "That's kind of my goal right now."
Metro on 07/31/2016