Tuesday, June 7, 2011

A New Meaning

In our coverage area we have the D-Day Memorial. We are up there so much that we jokingly refer to it as our Bedford Bureau. With that said D-Day had kind of become this stale event. When I thought of D-Day all I could think about was one ceremony after the next...so similar you have a hard time remembering whether you had photographed a Memorial Day ceremony or a Veteran's Day ceremony. Sure I had seen Saving Private Ryan but I didn't know anyone in D-Day. It just didn't feel real to me.

In anticipation of the Memorial's 10th anniversary and the fact that people who were there are getting older and older, the paper decided to do an oral history project with some of the folks who were either in D-Day or lost someone in D-Day. I begrudgingly agreed to do the project, thinking it too would have little meaning to me. I couldn't have been more wrong. These stories were so fascinating and the people who were sharing them with us really brought me there with their interviews. I couldn't stop thinking about them, they were so personal and honest.

A week before the project was published on our website I had to go to the memorial to photograph something that was going to go with our package and for the first time that place felt special to me. I walked around and the memorial was coming alive. I realized then how important it is to record these stories. The history is dying (literally) and I'm honored to be able to document it before it is too late. Click here to link to the page with their stories. Listen to all of them. Trust me. They are good.





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