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Stories of veteran service and sacrifice straight from the people driving today’s most important veterans causes and veterans organizations around the world. The show shines a spotlight on their inspiring projects making a real difference for veterans and their families, and along the way we'll hear the stories that drive them to do their best every day as they work to support veterans and their memory.
Hey. It's Matthew Cudmore with story behind the stone, a show where we talk service, sacrifice, and story, connecting you to the individuals changing the way the world remembers veterans causes in commemoration. Today's guest is Monica Mohindra, Director of the Library of Congress Veterans History Project, a project which has been in operation for over twenty five years now. This is one of the largest oral history collections in the world. Since February, the project has preserved over 120,000 firsthand stories from America's Veterans.
Speaker 1:Monica's team is racing against time to capture these voices before they're lost forever. In this episode, we dive into why these stories matter and how they're shaping the way future generations understand service, sacrifice, and history. Monica, thank you so much for joining the show. And to our listeners, thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 2:Welcome to story behind the stone where we talk service, sacrifice, and story. Today, we're sitting down with Monica, the director of the veterans history project with the Library of Congress. Really excited to have you here today, Monica.
Speaker 3:Thanks. I'm really glad to be here.
Speaker 1:Monica, it's great to see you. I would really like to just give some context on what the Veteran History Project is, and how it came to be.
Speaker 3:The Veteran's History Project is actually many things at the same time. It is an existing collection of 120,000 and growing individual voices of US Veterans First person experience. And it is your listeners' opportunity to make history and get that next veteran's story into the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C, the nation's library. And how we do that is we work with individuals and organizations, members of Congress around the country to ensure that they have access to little tips and techniques from the backgrounds of oral history and ethnography and the required forms to be part of a serious archive and a governmental enterprise so that those collections can be accessioned and really ensure that the voices of US Military Veterans, those who served from World War I through the more recent conflicts, help us all connect to and understand our collective history.
Speaker 2:Can I just say - that's really interesting because just as you're talking there, what I'm picking up is that when you're collecting these stories, that it's more than just asking a few questions? It's kind of like a process and a, you know, it's, it needs to be done in a certain way to really capture the essence of it and that your website is actually in and your resources are actually supporting people and doing this in a way that can make it so it's like historical documents that people can continue to use. Am I getting that right?
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for hearing the seriousness of purpose behind it. We do like to say it's as simple as a conversation that you sit down with a veteran in your life, and that might be an unexpected person, and that you can use the recording device you have in your pocket. But the truth is we do need that intent. It is a national archive. It is a national effort.
Speaker 3:And we have collections spanning from World War I through the current conflicts, but also spanning the country. So literally from Alaska to Puerto Rico, from Maine to Guam. And in order to get that expansive understanding also of the individual experiences of our nation during times of conflict, of what that service and what that sacrifice is like, you're right. We do need to have a serious process. It's not fishtails of glory days.
Speaker 3:It really is what did it mean to you? How did it feel? We're not looking for those after action battle reports. We're not looking for a journalistic gotcha piece. We really are looking for that human moment between individuals to understand the human scope and scale and how we're all connected to that.
Speaker 1:It's a beautiful, gigantic, and scaled mission. What does it mean to you?
Speaker 3:Gosh. Well, I've been with the project myself for now twenty some years, and I've only been the director for the past two and a half, almost three years. I come from a family history, some of which I'm just starting to unpack myself. My mother passed away in the fall and I just recently learned that a great grandfather of mine served in the civil war. I had no idea.
Speaker 3:No one, as much as my family, talked about genealogy and history and how we're all connected to a very prideful family about how we're connected to the history of DC and, in fact, to the country on that side, on my mom's side. But in all these years, I won't tell you quite how old I am, you can find it yourself. I never knew. I had no idea. And now it's really too late to ask more about that story.
Speaker 3:All I have is one letter and one broken rosary and a picture of a gravestone. So I know that this great, great grandfather served in the Civil War. I mean, my grandfather served. I know cousins from Ireland served and then went back to Ireland. So to me, this effort is both very personal.
Speaker 3:My husband served and he comes from a long line of service on his side of the family. Deeply personal from that perspective. And also at the root of what I think we all need, which is to listen to each other and to witness each other and to bear witness to those universal themes and to that connectivity. So to a certain extent, could say its meaning to me is kind of my life's purpose, quite honestly.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's such an alignment, I think, all of those webs interweaving. What what does your family think you do?
Speaker 3:You mean my children? What do they ask? Yeah. What do they think I do? I they once asked me not to volunteer for, you know, when the parents come to school and share, because they're like, I don't know that it would be interesting to my classmates.
Speaker 3:Because they're young and I think they weren't quite getting it. But a couple of years ago, our town put up a really incredible temporary monument during the Memorial Day weekend in our little bedroom community aside from Washington, DC. They put up these sort of markers, almost like tombstones, for the veterans who had served and had passed from our town. And we went and walked and talked about it and started really getting into the idea of what it is that I do and why I do it. And the kids are starting to understand.
Speaker 3:The rest of my family, I think, really gets the importance of it because we all have had that experience of losing someone that we didn't get to ask them all the questions. We didn't take the time. There wasn't that presentation that we've just talked about, about a seriousness of purpose. I think without having an effort to work on that means something, people can be afraid of asking questions that might be challenging or that might make an emotional impact on the person they're asking the questions of. So, what the project does is really give you that impetus, that opportunity to work on something together.
Speaker 3:History happens all the time and it happens today. And it happens when you make something like this. And so, I think everyone has experienced that secondary loss. You lose someone and then you realize you've lost so much more. And so, I think people can really connect with what we're doing because we're saying, Get the story now before actuarial reality set in.
Speaker 3:And if you're at that place, create the legacy now through photographs and letters and diaries and journals. But also, go ahead and look at the 120,000 individual stories we already have and see how you're connected to those. So that's a very long answer to your nice, succinct question, but I think the family gets it.
Speaker 2:You said something there and invoked a lot of emotion. And I'm feeling it right now. Have, like yourself, a lot of service in my family. My grandfather in particular, you know, he was pulling out airmen out of the English Channel during the Second World War and then came to Canada and served. And I remember when I was about 16, I sat down with him and I had a audio recorder, and I just wanted to ask him about his life.
Speaker 2:And it was beautiful because I got to sit there, but I lost the tape. And, you know, and and yeah, and I'm just when you said the secondary loss, it's hitting me like I'm getting, I can feel it. And I'm just like, I feel actually a deep loss, in that. And this is, you know, to me, you're highlighting just the importance of this. And I think that's a really important message is probably not to wait.
Speaker 2:You know, if you have these these people in your life, always, you know, life is busy and we can always make excuses to put things off. But those memories, we just, you know, we don't know what life holds and how things play out. And I think we've, you know, at some way or another, we all experience loss. But this idea of secondary loss is, it's something that I feel. And I really hope, you know, younger people out there listening to this, maybe take that message and run with it is, you know, preserve those stories, ask those questions and record it.
Speaker 2:It's important and it's it's something I tried to do. And I I feel sadness because I had that and I don't know what happened to it. But I just want to highlight that for our listeners is, you know, take action. If you feel inspired, you know, take action.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm so sorry. I know that experience too, personally, and it is really devastating. And your situation is going to help so many other people because you can promote this idea not only to sit down and do it, to make a copy right away, and to have two recording devices going. I don't know if this has happened to you in your professional capacity, recording amazing conversations. But one thing that we've learned, and a huge loss for me, was I sat down to do a recording and didn't know that the initial recording device was failing, so missed the whole thing.
Speaker 3:So now we generally try to suggest that folks do two recording devices where possible, you know, basically get it done because what you didn't lose was the experience. So, get it done however you can get it done. Get it done as quickly as possible. Do two recording devices as you can and make a copy as soon as you can. And then your loss won't be for naught.
Speaker 3:But I also have to say, we often talk about the ripple effect of the benefit. So, in our case, for the Veterans History Project, if you go to the website, which is locfor Library of Congress, Gov for government / vets, V E T S for veterans, if you go to the website, you're an immediate beneficiary. It doesn't matter if you're an American citizen or you're around the world, You're an immediate beneficiary to all of these individual peoples, donated, voluntary, you know, they gave of their resources, emotional and otherwise, to make sure that this happened. You're a beneficiary. But we talk about the impact, and this is where it happened for you, Ryan.
Speaker 3:The moment of sitting down with him caused a life trajectory for you that's a gift that will never be gone. And even though you don't have the recording, that's the first moment of impact. When the project was started, it was we've been looking a lot at the history because we're coming up on a milestone anniversary. So, I now know listening to the original debate on the House floor of how the project was started, how much individual members of Congress, both in the House and Senate, were really connecting with the idea of this legislation. And every single person in there, you can hear them talking about wanting their family and their community and their constituents and their country to be able to have this conversation, to be this vehicle, this bridge between those who served, who were there at that moment of big history, and those who didn't.
Speaker 3:You know? And they're thinking about their own children interviewing their own grandfathers and uncles and their own grandmothers and aunts and whatever it is. And so, we talk about this sense of benefit being from that very first conversation. You broke the divide. You sort of pushed a taboo at 16 to sit and talk with him about this.
Speaker 3:And then look what you're doing now. So I hear you. Do feel a loss, but it's not for naught.
Speaker 2:Well, I appreciate you saying that. And, you know, and as as you're saying that, I remember, my dad told me after my grandfather passed away just how much it meant to him that I sat down and took that time. Like, know, that's a memory he has, and I'm so grateful that he had that and kept that and shared that with my dad because, yeah, that motivated me too.
Speaker 3:We try not to speak on behalf of the veterans. Right? Our collection is just first person. So we have no proxy interviews, no trying to put words in the minds or mouths of veterans. So I don't like to say this lightly, but you're not the only person I've heard from that's talked about that other benefit when we talk about these ripples.
Speaker 3:So it's just not just the person who asks the questions, the person who helps to package it together and send it to the you know, the the ripples grow out. But we hear from family members all the time about how meaningful it is to the veterans themselves. I don't want to put that on them, so I will say I've heard it. I've heard that they really get something out of this. We can look to history and we can look to culture.
Speaker 3:I mean, from Maya Angelou to Stephen Ambrose, like anyone you can think of, there's a beautiful quote that talks about the burden of an untold story. And if you're the person that sat down to help someone unlock that, then you have to be playing a very special role in their lives forever after.
Speaker 1:Monica, is there someone that you like, if you had a time machine and you could go back and interview anyone, what who would that person be?
Speaker 3:Now you're making me feel it. I would had just started at the project. I was at the library in another capacity and was struggling. It was after September 11. My now spouse was deployed, and it was just a hard time in my life.
Speaker 3:And I was looking for ways to connect to this career path that I stumbled on. And I discovered that Howard Zinn was a veteran. And I was just fascinated by his work in the veterans community and what he was up to. Plucky and green and twenty years ago, some years ago, I, just called him up out of the blue and was like, I really wanna interview you or get you interviewed. I wasn't even so bold as to say I would do it, but I let let's let's set this up.
Speaker 3:Like, let's get you interviewed for the Veterans History Project. And he agreed. And then, you know, things happen the way they do with work and life and everything else. And shortly thereafter, he passed away.
Speaker 1:Oh, boy.
Speaker 3:There's one. There are many, but that's the one they've noticed to buy this morning.
Speaker 1:Oh, that it's it's it's really tough that that that didn't happen. Going back to your your earlier comments about what it means for the veteran, you you had a 20,000 collections. You know, every time one comes in, that's another story. What what does that mean to you and the team?
Speaker 3:Oh, there's this really sort of a trite or a pat saying, you know, every veteran's story is important. Anyone who works in this sphere has some version of that that they say. And our team, we're about 25 folks strong. We have archivists. We have catalogers.
Speaker 3:We have people whose job it is to go and help train on this. If you want extra training, you can do it just from the materials we provide on the website, but they can help make it a little easier, a little, more accessible. So everyone across the board, we sort of feel that way, like every veteran's story is important, but you really see it happen when these things come in the mail. We get about two to 300 a month, depending on the month. And they come in through, sorry, not the U.
Speaker 3:S. Postal Service because everything's still irradiated that comes to Capitol Hill, but through commercial delivery services, people bring collections by in person because that's a really special experience. Or if we're out in the field, we travel around the country quite a bit. So you see that sense of awe and preciousness every time something gets handed over. And it's interesting to me after all these years, it hasn't really lost its edge.
Speaker 3:Many of us have been around for quite a while and there's some new stuff, but it hasn't lost that sense of like a gift and a gift that really will keep on giving. And now, in fact, I sort of, like a grandparent, I sort of look at these collections as they come in and I wonder what they're going to grow into. They're already this amazing little being, precious thing as it is, but I've been there long enough now that we've gotten to see When they started the project, they talked about this idea of the living legacy and there was all this focus. You cast your mind back to when everyone was very nostalgically fixated on World War II veterans. And so, there was all this focus on the living legacy.
Speaker 3:And oral history was kind of new. Twenty five years ago, people weren't really talking about it the way they are now. And so I thought, oh, they mean because you're talking to living people and they're the living legacy. That's not what it is. Here's what it is.
Speaker 3:The living legacy is you interview someone and they participate in creating that bit of history. They deposit that bit of history. Then someone else comes in, finds that bit of history, and then makes a play, a dance. They compose classical music to commemorate the Nuremberg trials. They use it to inform one of the famous Philadelphia murals.
Speaker 3:They create a book or a movie or a documentary or an article. And then documentation of those things, whether it's the choreography from the ballet, whether it's photographs of the mural, whether it's the book itself, then someone comes and looks at that at the Library of Congress, gets inspired by that through the website or actually in one of the reading rooms, and then they make something. And then a researcher comes and looks at that and that and that, and they find their way back to the Veterans History Project interview. And now we're talking about the living legacy. And we don't know how far that's gonna go, how many permutations of that are going to happen?
Speaker 3:And so, yeah, every sort is important.
Speaker 2:Well, jeez, Monica, you're shifting my paradigm a bit, right, as you're talking. What I mean by that is, you're educating me a little bit on living history, like our company. And there's a bit of a background story is, you know, I have a military history of my family that interested me. And years ago, I went and did a project for the one hundredth anniversary of a major battle for Canada. It was called the Battle of Vimy Ridge.
Speaker 2:And then for that project, there was an officer and he picked up some acorns off the battlefield and he sent them back to Canada. And so from those trees, I had some flutes made, one of them sitting on the wall behind me here. And so I played
Speaker 3:this how cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well and so I played Amazing Grace, you know, all across every battlefield I could, but the living history part of it is I ended up in Holland and Grosbeak, and I was there with a, World War Two soldier, Willie McGregor, at his brother, John McGregor's grave, he had asked me to play Amazing Grace for his brother. And so I played Amazing Grace and I'm talking to him and I'm learning about his brother. But, you know, this moment was really a catalyst for going, how do we how do we continue preserving these stories and sharing these stories? And it was really that interaction with him, you know, sharing his experience of the war, the memory of his brother, thinking of, you know, individuals that I worked with that we lost in Afghanistan, like all of these little pieces coming together that really inspired. So, know, what you're doing is, is it just for me is I'm recognizing as you're saying that, a kid putting together a play or some classical music, you know, living history, this is how we how we keep that torch alive as that analogy goes in.
Speaker 2:And I'm just, you know, as I look at what you're doing and that you have 100, one hundred plus thousand of these these stories and you're collecting more, you're really a hub for living history, aren't you?
Speaker 3:I think I mean, I hope we're a hub for living history and the acorn at the same time. I think that we have to be both at the same time to really be about posterity. And at the Library of Congress, that's the whole goal. When they wrote the legislation for the Veterans History Project, if you get a chance to look at it, it's on our website too. It's so beautifully written.
Speaker 3:And if you hear what they were talking about on the floor when they passed it unanimously in both houses, they talked about 2,030, two thousand and 40, generations of people being able to hear these stories. I don't know if they conceived then of the idea of not just the original stories, but everything else it was going to inspire. So, I mean, what I love about your story is that the connection is in every moment, right? Whether it's the acorn or the flute or the making of the flute or the hearing of the story. And so, you're sort of like a living example of what I hope the Veterans History Project is kind of across the country.
Speaker 3:And that people understand that it is as valuable as it is used. Right? So what you did was you took that and you used it to propel more and to create more. And we have these and it's so great that they're accessible and that for somewhere between 7080% of all the individuals represented in our collections, there's something of their personal story that is digitized and accessible to anyone in the world. You can go in there, you can see their pictures or hear their voice, and that's growing.
Speaker 3:We're doing more and more of that. If you don't use it, then it's is it hurt? You know, it's that whole thing about the the tree falling in the woods. So it is the use that also helps make it valuable. So I hope we're both.
Speaker 3:I hope we're the acorn and the living history.
Speaker 2:Well, it definitely sounds that you are. You know, do you have any examples of that living history kind of coming out of the work you've been doing?
Speaker 3:I mean, every day. I think a lot about the educators who have been with the project since the beginning. Teachers in the classroom, using it as an opportunity to work on important curricular aspects, almost like a living lab. So, a teacher who One, for instance, in Pennsylvania who worked across disciplines. So, an English teacher, social studies, and an art teacher walked into a bar.
Speaker 3:No. They walked into a school and they figured out how to attack curricula that was important to their subject area with the Veterans History Project. The students did interviews, worked on them together, created the actual interviews, but then also did things like, in the early days, made wikis so that this information would be accessible for an immediate historic context, learned about the whole archiving process and how it would come to the Library of Congress. That particular teacher started so long ago. He's actually the one who he helped us celebrate the ten year anniversary of VHP, and he's the one who helped us understand educator speak, how to get our criteria so easily digestible.
Speaker 3:He's the one that gave us the ten, twenty, 30 rule. So that living history for him, he had these students who did that way back when they created these products, and now he's using their creative output, whether it's the wiki or the original interviews, and students are coming back and researching in those collections to then inform new collections and new work. And that's just one example of, I would hazard to guess, thousands across the past couple of decades and across the country. The one example I always touch on because it, I think, is just so extraordinary for the, I think it was the sixty fifth commemoration of the Nuremberg trials, that example of the dance and the commissioned piece. It was in collaboration with Harvard Law School.
Speaker 3:And they came and they looked at collections of those who had served during the Nuremberg trials, they created a dance and a commissioned classical music piece. Those items are now at the library, the choreography and the music. And I am fortunate to know of researchers who've used both the choreography and the music, and then gone back to the original collections and have done other things with those. So, we're so lucky, you know, to be able to see this happen all the time.
Speaker 2:That's really cool to see that in action. One of the things that we love is story, and this is what you're capturing. I'm curious. Is there any particular story that you've heard, that really has touched your heart?
Speaker 3:Alright. How much time do we have?
Speaker 2:I thought so.
Speaker 3:You know, a 20,000 plus and growing stories and veterans and people of service that we talk to every day, I would say the story that compels me the most is the one we haven't gotten yet. I'm gonna take the cuff out. The story from your listeners that's waiting to be told. It's It's the postal delivery carrier who she brought you your mail, you know, all during the pandemic that connected you to the world and you never knew that she was a veteran. You know, it's the guy who is in the office at your kid's school and you didn't know that he was a veteran.
Speaker 3:And it's that moment, think the thing that is just so compelling to me is that moment when somebody recognizes someone in their lives and says, You asked me earlier, what about a story that I missed, I wish I hadn't missed? And the one that's with me every day when I go into the office is actually my own grandfather's. You know? I sat down with, a recording device with him many times. I got him to sing songs to me because I was gonna move away.
Speaker 3:And so I have those. I have these amazing tapes of the songs he used to sing around the house. I didn't have the impetus. I didn't know to ask. So, the story that that really catches my emotions and my attentions every day are the one that's coming in tomorrow from your listeners.
Speaker 2:I I think is a a perfect answer. It's not a cop out at all, because that's, in essence, what you're trying to do is spark that inspiration in people to take that story, to listen. And, you know, I've been so fortunate to work with veterans of different wars and and and just ask questions and ask different questions. You know, whether that there is a fellow Ernie I worked with at the military museums, and he fought through Italy and he was captured. And one of the questions I asked him, like, what was what was the first thing you did when you got back home?
Speaker 2:And he goes, Ryan, I went and I took my money and I bought myself a nice suit. And I thought that just like that said so much about him. You know, he he had been a prisoner. And I think the experience of being a prisoner can be super challenging. I can't even imagine.
Speaker 2:And for him, buying a suit and the dignity that a suit brought back to him said, you know, said so much. And, you know, it's one of those answers I never would have expected. I don't know who knows that. I know that and I share his story on that. And he had so many other stories.
Speaker 2:And I think just asking that question, different question, you know, I know sometimes kids will ask like, Did you kill anyone? I've been asked that. And, you know, it's that curiosity. It's an innocent curiosity. But it's it's about that humanizing question that what was your experience like that?
Speaker 2:You know, what was your what is one thing that stood out to you? I love asking that question. What's one thing? And and the bomber pilot talking about how he bombed broccoli fields if they weren't able to hit the target because he hated broccoli. It's just like, I didn't expect to hear that one.
Speaker 2:Right. And, you know, it's those little little gems that you just, I guess, don't expect it, you know, and you have me sitting here and I just want to start looking at your collection because I didn't realize just how rich it was.
Speaker 3:Thank you for that, and thank you for your thoughtful questions. I think asking the kinds of questions that help us discover something is a little bit of a lost art. And one of the things I hope for out of your work, out of the work of the project, is this opening up of the capacity to ask each other questions and sit and listen. Really listen with seriousness. And a question like, What did you do when you came back?
Speaker 3:That's a perfect example of the kind of work we're trying to inspire and the kind of juicy details you can find in our collections. And I think knowing that those really great open ended questions, like, What's one thing that you really wanted to share that really stood out to you or that made you laugh? Or did you pull a great prank? These kinds of questions, they come to us. Not everyone is in that professional capacity that you're in.
Speaker 3:But we can all kind of get to that more rich experience of life if what we do is we use what we just listened to to inform what our next question is. And so much of how we live our lives today, we don't really give ourselves the opportunity for this, right? We listen to other people doing it on podcasts. We listen We're all obsessed with podcasts, right? We listen to other people doing it in the media, sort of.
Speaker 3:But this idea that the person sitting next to you at the coffee bar or the person that you work with, in your case, at the museum or at the library or wherever, that there's really so much to be opened up there that's going to have a huge impact on your life. Although our goal obviously is for those of service, but you can take these skills, you can take this idea and really apply it to anything in your life, you know?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, in curiosity, you know, I work in the leadership realm. I work with teams and team effectiveness. And one of the biggest strengths you can learn is to ask questions with curious curiosity, because you're completely open, open to it. And you'd be surprised if one comes out.
Speaker 2:I'm just like, there's so many things that, you know, I want to tie in just one other thing because you just reminded me of this. And when I was standing with Willie, later on, I was sitting in the tour bus and this Willie McGregor, who I played the flute for his brother. And I asked him, what was one fun thing that happened for you? And he told me a quick story about he was a medic. And so when the war was it was called and the Germans had surrendered, they locked everyone in place, but the medics could move.
Speaker 2:And so they wanted to find some way to get a few drinks. And so what they did is that they had a pig that was slaughtered. And so they put it on a gurney and it covered it and they drove it across the line and they traded it for a bunch of alcohol and they were coming back across the line to go back to their buddies. And then an officer caught him, I believe, and had taken he had ended up the officer just took a couple bottles and sent them on their way. And so but it just, you know, it spoke to this this really unique moment that, you know, I couldn't imagine what it would have felt like to have the war over after going through everything they've been through.
Speaker 2:And, you know, that's the thing that stood out for him is how he could help celebrate that peace and that moment. And so, you know, I just I really want to echo what you're saying, Monica, to anybody listening. To talk about, in my experience in talking to veterans, is it's such a surprise what sticks out to them, what's interesting to them. Know, it's not just about the war experience. The war experience isn't what we just see in movies.
Speaker 2:And I think you had said something similar to that. It's so much more. It's so much more human. And I think if you just go with that curiosity and ask those people in your life, you'll be surprised about what you'll find.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, that's the nutshell of the shared work we do right there. I think that's really it. Also, I think the the shared humanity in that moment. Right?
Speaker 3:Like, he he just the the guard just took a couple of battles for himself because he got it. Like, he totally understood
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:What was happening in that moment. And I love stories like that because they translate across experience. You know, if I can connect to that from my own life, then half the battle's won about why we're doing what we're doing, which is to share about our common humanity and how that common humanity connects us to a sense of history that we don't always understand but is shared.
Speaker 2:That's beautiful. Well, Monica, this has just been an amazing experience to sit and chat with you. I'm curious just what's coming up next for you and for the listeners, if they want to learn more, where do they go?
Speaker 3:Oh, well, thank you for that setup. They should please go to the website for the Veterans History Project, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, which is LOCforLibraryofCongress,.govforgovernment/vets,VETSforveterans. And there's a ton of stuff there, how to get to the point where you're participating, how to get into the exact collections, and sort of an online exhibit we call Serving Our Voices, which we're really proud of. It's really a great resource. And what's next is beginning in October of this year, we're highlighting the twenty fifth anniversary of the legislation that founded the Veterans History Project.
Speaker 3:It's such a remarkable thing because when it was founded, there was this sense of World War II nostalgia, and we're gonna get these voices before they're completely lost for World War I and World War II. And in fact, all the way up, they mentioned on the floor during session, all the way up through the Gulf War. But it was, Get it in, and we're gonna close the project in five years. So that we're here twenty five years later and still getting those stories in and still finding those connections is really thanks to all the individuals across the country all these years making that happen. So that's what's next.
Speaker 3:And onward with the project, making these connections and making these collections available, and accessible and discoverable.
Speaker 2:Monica, thank you so much for all the work you're doing and taking the time to talk with us today. I've immensely enjoyed this conversation, Matthew. Me too. Yeah. For our listeners, if you've enjoyed this conversation, make sure other people hear it share this, this in particular, because I think it's so important to capture these stories and maybe this conversation will inspire people to capture those stories and share it with this very worthwhile project.
Speaker 2:And, thanks again for joining us today.
Speaker 3:Really appreciate you having me. Thank you. Thanks
Speaker 1:so much for tuning in. Story Behind the Stone is available on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on the Wreaths Across America Radio Network, on iHeartRadio, Audacity, and TuneIn to search for Wreath. We air every Thursday at 10AM eastern on the Wreaths Across Radio Network. Thank you for tuning in.