For oral history, but first, we learn about this collection from the Center Project executive director. At theeaches History Academy at west point and is the director of west points Oral History Center. How long has the Oral History Center been associated with the academy . Its been associated with the academy since about 2007. Ive been the director since 2015, january. What is the value of an oral history . Well, for us, we try to make it accessible to the cadets say so they can use it for their research. But really all of our videos, all of our interviews, are open sourced so anyone in america can get online, look at our interviews, and hopefully learn something about our history from them. Well, as a historian, as a professional historian, whats the place that oral histories hold in the overall study of history . Well, oral histories help add a lot of detail. For example, if youre writing a paper, a book about something, and you find some oral histories, that you can pull information from that to add a little bit of color or a little bit of nuance to what youre writing about and it gives you the experience of the people that live through it. And its interesting because memories are different, you know . People remember things differently and they change a little bit over time, so its good to add to some of the research youre doing, but of course, you always want it backed up with good primary sourced documents. And whats the scope . Who are you capturing in your collection . We interview a wide variety of people. For example, today were going out to interview the oldest graduate from west point. Hes currently 103 years old. But we also interview cadets. So everything in between. And it isnt just west point graduates. We interview enlisted soldiers that fought in any war, world war ii, korea, vietnam, even the current wars, and we also interview spouses, we interview politicians or other people in the public sphere that do things with the military. So anybody who is tangentially related to the military, we try to capture their stories so we , have a very broad holding. Does anyone say no . Not yet. Well, some people weve had one or two. Weve had one or two people say no, and we respect that, but we always try to encourage them to tell their story because each story is a piece of a mosaic, right . For example, in our vietnam archive that has 130 interviews, each story is a piece of the vietnam war story. And one of the things we tell prospective interviewees, we say, look, if you dont want to talk about yourself, talking about some of the soldiers you served with. And sometimes, that encourages them. They dont want to talk about things theyve done, but they want to talk about the great things that people they served with did. Do you do the interviews yourself . I do a lot of them. We have a few other interviewers , and we also try to get other instructors to do interviews. For example, if an instructor says i know somebody who would be a great interview, i say, great, bring them in, you can do the interview. That gives them experience, plus they probably know the story better than i do. They have some experience with the person, and so they can pull , out more of the details than i could. We try to get cadets involved. And if cadets can are working on a paper, a project, for example, their senior thesis, we encourage them to get some oral history interviews. Bring in some people, talk to them. Weve had two different cadets over the past couple of years interview three people and use those in their senior thesis. So that makes us happy. And once youve got this broad number of interview subjects, how do you categorize it so that it is accessible to the people who want to reach into it . A lot of times, we categorize them by location, theme. For example, if its a prisoner of war story or if its military families, if military families are mentioned or military techniques, army athletics, we will category is it so that people categorize it so it so people can get on our website and look at the different categories and narrow down what theyre interested in seeing. We also have five archives and our archives are sponsored by either individuals or different year groups, different classes from west point. For example, the vietnam war archive is sponsored by the class of 1965. And so, thats a broad archive, and then, we collect the interviews under that heading. So for example, if you wanted to watch vietnam war interviews, go to the archive section and find that. If you want to watch interviews from west point leaders through history, click on that archive. Do you also have diplomats and people who are deciding war policy . We do. And whats the scope of that part of the collection . Well, we try to get as many of those people as we can. Sometimes, we have different interviewers that we hire that work on different projects. For example, Brent Scowcroft donated some money to have a collection of 10 videos dealing with certain Current Issues and so we had an interviewer go out and try to interview as many different people that were related to for, say, the drone issue. Are drones good or bad . And so, it looks at the problem from both sides, and in a very openended sort of way, addresses the issue, and those are designed to be used in the classroom to get cadets talking about it. And we dont want to tell them what to think, but we want to give them a lot of different ideas and let them wrestle with it. So, if youve seen the scope from the oldest living, 103, you are about to do, youre about to do all the way to cadets, is there a commonality in the military experience that youre seeing across generations . A lot of times, people talk about i always ask them, what does your service mean to you . At the end. If its if its somebody who didnt go to west point, what does your service mean to you . If its a west point graduate, what does west point mean to you . And there are. A lot of people talk about honor, honorable service. A lot of people talk about the things they learned in the military. We had one a hungarian refugee , who was drafted in the military and served in vietnam, he said the military matured him. It exposed him to a lot of different types of people he wouldnt have met otherwise and it taught him to appreciate the differences in people. Who are your most memorable interviews . People ask me that all the time so im turning the tables on , you. Sure. Sure. Well, there are a lot of there are a lot of ways to answer that question. One of the things that we like to do is if we find out somebody has recently passed that we interviewed, we try to republish their interview. General rowny just passed away. He worked for five different president s. He fought in world war ii. He was in korea. He served under both eisenhower and mcarthur. He was in vietnam, and he just passed away. So we republished his interview. Interesting story about general rowny. We had a visiting professor at west point who was working on a book on ataturk and i had just , interview rowny, and i said general rowny met ataturk when he was a college student. He was over in europe, he went ataturk, wanted to interview him, and said ataturk spent answering him 1. 5 hours questions. I got his phone number, passed it off to the professor, and the professor who was researching ataturk got to talk to general , rowny about his personal experiences meeting him. That was fabulous. We interviewed this one, sung yun was her name. She was born once the korean war started. Her parents were separated. Her father was down in southern korea, what became south korea. Her mother was up in northern korea. The family was separated. There was a fouryearold girl, yun turned four years old, the mother decided to carry her two children south out of north korea and try to find her husband. Middle of winter, she had to cross a frozen river. She sold her wedding ring to get food for one of the things. So sung yun, who was four years old at the time, was retelling her mothers story. When we finished, we said this is a fabulous story. She said whatever happened to your parents . Theyre living in brooklyn. We said, weve got to go interview your parents. We went down there and interviewed the mother and the father and got their story. And they spoke in their native language, and their son did the translating for me. And it was so wonderful because id ask him a question and hed turn and either ask his mother or his father. And he would hold their hand as he was asking the question. And it was a fabulous interview because we got their perspectives, what it was like to be in south korea, what it was like to be in northern korea , and how they reunited. Then they came to america and established a church. Well, the elderly reverend park passed away yesterday, and so we republished his interview, and i think that was a very memorable one because so many different stories tied together with that one. So you mentioned the individual grants that fund some of this, but overall, how is the oral history project funded . Its all donor money. All donor money. And how have you gotten people interested in this . Well, being in the military, i cant raise money, but the association of graduates, west Point Association of graduates , handles that for us and they do the outreach and things like that. What is the farther youve had to travel for an interview . California. We went to the Oral History Association conference last year , and so, we went out to california, and we managed to get three interviews while we were out there. An actor, patrick gorman, who was in the movie gettysburg, and he had been in the navy, navy reserve, and then he got drafted into the army and served in both the army and navy. We reached out to him. We got his interview, and then, we interviewed two vietnamese veterans that were out in california. One was a pilot, who flew both propeller planes and jet planes, and the other was a nurse. In the nurse served both men and the army of the republic of vietnam. It was interesting, we said, while, why did you serve the . He hated the french. Why did you serve the arvin . The army of the republic of vietnam. He loved his country and loved working with americans. He had a large family and as things were going bad for south vietnam, he had to figure out what to do with his children. One of his sons, he gave to an american who was serving with Doctors Without Borders over in vietnam, gave him to this american. The american brought him home, raised him. The son graduated from west point in 1985, and thats the year his vietnamese parents finally got out of vietnam and came to america. So we interviewed his vietnamese father about what it was like to be a nurse serving in vietnam. And that was fabulous. It sounds like there is a great deal of breadth to this collection. You obviously have an interest in more people accessing it. How are you planning to do the marketing, as it were, side of all of this . What are your specific goals at the american History Association conference . At the american History Association conference, were doing an oral history panel. We submitted two different clips for the oral history juke box. And well be in a panel deduction about that. One clip is about one of the first three women to graduate from Ranger School. And we picked that one because its such a touching story because we said, what was your most difficult time in Ranger School . And she said it was missing her kid, and at night, she would cuddle her blanket and imagine it was her kid. That was a fabulous story. It brought everybody in the interview session to tears. We had to stop the film. We all cried. Everybody got their composure back. Started the film and continued the interview. The other clip we submitted was a group, it was a family, a mother and her five children who the father was killed at the end of the vietnam war and they were all refugees coming to america, and the first group was a 14yearold girl and her 11yearold brother. She was on her own, coming to first the philippines and then to america, and then, she reestablished the family and eventually, everyone got back together in seattle. And so, it was a story from the brother, who was 11 years old, being on the boat going to the philippines and having the threat of being thrown overboard if the rations ran too low. So thats what were doing here at the Oral History Association. A i want anyone to access our interviews. Westpointcoh. Org, central for oral history, and i advertise them on both twitter and facebook, and either or west point center for oral history. We try to show what they look like at the time we are looking at. For example, the vietnam interview, and if it is a west we have those pictures with a link to the interview, and we hope people click on it and go to the site. Thank you very much for your time. It was a pleasure. Thank you. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2018] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] announcer and now, courtesy of the west point center for oral history, an interview with military Academy Graduate stephen darrah, who was a helicopter pirate during the vietnam war. This is about 50 minutes. April 11, 2016. Im in savannah, georgia, with stephen darrah, major retired from the u. S. Army, and, steve, lets start off by spelling your full name. My first name is stephen, stephen. And my last name is darrah. Darrah. Provide a framework for our discussion here this afternoon. Take us from your Early Childhood right up through west point, into the army, and through your army career. We will come back and look at more detail. Stephen
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