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Voices of History
Our Mission
The Voices of History started as the Voices of Warriors oral history project focused on those who fought or otherwise served the nation in World War II. Our mission is to obtain first hand oral histories from these individuals before they are lost forever. We are losing these individuals at over 1,000 per day, and the stories should be preserved using state-of-art videography and archiving techniques.
Organization Profile
VOH is a grassroots effort founded in Colorado. It collects donations from individuals and organizations interested in recording our history and educating Americans about the sacrifices of what Tom Brokaw has termed "The Greatest Generation". In essence, VOH is an "information technology" organization developing a database of information that gets more valuable with age. The importance of maintaining first hand accounts cannot be stressed too highly; we don't want history to be "revised" after the loss of these true heroes to time. Another component of the effort is to utilize these valuable accounts as an educational tool for all people, but especially students. There is a "gap" in history for many Americans; those of whose who were alive during a particular event are often well aware of that event. Most people over 50 years old well remember the daily reporting of the Vietnam War and associated war protests during the 1960's. How does today's 15 year old view the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger? While most of us remember exactly where were and what we were doing, the 15 year old does not have this perspective. VOH seeks to fill this "gap" using current technology and avoid any reinterpretation of actual events at a later time.
Irv Obermeyer speaks to students on a
regular basis about his experiences in a submarine in WWII. Irv was in
the submarine that snuck into Tokyo Bay early in the war and gathered
intelligence on Japanese activities. The movie "Run Silent, Run
Deep" was based on the experience.
There have been similar projects conducted by other organizations and individuals, but nothing on the scale of Voices of History. We originally sought the stories of veterans from World War II, the Voices of Warriors, but realized the need to record stories of those who made the industrial effort surrounding the war possible, those who began the Space program, those who fought in Korea, etc.
Steven Spielberg has been conducting a project to record Holocaust
survivors, but it is only part of the story. The warriors who freed the
surviving Holocaust victims, those who were victorious over Japan and the Axis
powers, must also have their story told.
The vision of the Voices of Warriors history project is to build an
interactive memorial for World War II. There are movements around Colorado and
the country to build war memorials for this incredible event in history, but
these are rarely interactive. We are seeking to build a system which can be
used to educate people on the war, using the real people that participated and
their stories. We will seek out and arrange for professional video or audio
taping of these individuals using tried and true formats to encourage
discussion. The records will be archived using state of the art techniques and
other master recordings will be used to produce media for use on websites,
classrooms, kiosks, or other events where the information will be of use.
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Contact Information
Please feel free to contact us if you would like to volunteer or no of someone we should be interviewing for the project.
Telephone
(303) 692-1443
FAX
(303) 932-1085
Postal address
VOW
c/o R Scott
7563 South Holland Street
Littleton, Colorado 80128-5119
Electronic mail
General Information: Russ Scott
Technical Operations/Production: Nancy Thomas
Ford
Webmaster: RScott@CyberDude.com