Veterans are the keepers of some of the nation's most important history. It is vital that society record and preserve their experiences and memories, so that it can learn from them. The American Folklife Center in Helena, Montana, is working hard to keep veterans' stories alive in conjunction with a national initiative to promote historical preservation.
The center recently began work on the Veterans' History Project. Led by Sen. Steve Daines, the Montana chapter's mission for the project is to train local volunteers to record veterans' personal accounts of war and history and gather the personal items they are willing to share. The stories collected will be preserved in the Library of Congress.
The Great Falls Tribune reported that the "project makes personal accounts of wartime veterans accessible can be an incredible resource for researchers, educators and future generations to better understand the realities of war."
The volunteers in Montana will spend the day of Oct. 10 collecting the narratives, postcards, photographs and other wartime memorabilia from local veterans. These items will later be sent to join the rest of the nation's stories in Washington, D.C.