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Part “Band of Brothers” and part History of Louisville: 1935-1955, the new exhibit at the Frazier International Museum of History, called “WWII: 48 Local Stories That Changed the World,” is a must see for any Louisvillian even remotely interested in American History.
The exhibit consists of 48 biographical sketches, compiled by Frazier staff from video interviews they did with the subjects. The stories are organized as snippets having to do with a particular subject—basic training, life in combat, etc.—and can be watched on interactive video screens throughout the exhibit.
Those individuals—all from Louisville and Southern Indiana—come from such a wide variety of backgrounds that it seems certain that two of them, a woman named Dorothy (McKinley) Seifert who signed up for volunteer factory work because she liked the uniforms, and a dentist named Dr. Vincent Barr who spent the entire war in the Pacific as a dental administrator, shared absolutely nothing in common except their association with the war and the part of the world that they come from.
The Frazier Museum does a remarkable job of establishing this point—that the individuals chronicled in the exhibit are connected both by WWII and by the Louisville area. The details of the stories themselves—John Plamp, who was a German prisoner of war, tells of how his freedom was essentially bought from his German captors for three of his cigarettes, which he only relinquished after in turn being promised a bottle of bourbon—connect the exhibit's visitors to its subjects, and thus to the war itself.
Frazier spokesperson Krista McHone thinks that connection is what makes the exhibit special, as well as what makes this one different from other WWII museum exhibits. “This is a way to really hear it from the first-person, directly from the people who went through it—it's interesting to go 'Hey, they were just people, they were just kids, they were just somebody like me,' but in a very different era,” she said. “Hopefully it brings people closer together.”
The exhibit comes in the year of the 70th anniversary of the beginning of WWII, which underscores both the timeliness of the exhibit and the necessity to record the stories of the people who lived through the war. McHone said that the exhibit has perhaps had a larger impact on the families of the subjects than on the subjects themselves.
“For some people, this is the first time they've really heard their granddad's story, or that even spouses had gotten some of the details” of the war, she said. “It was very powerful to see.”
The museum is currently looking for a 49th local WWII story, which will become part of the exhibit in January 2010. Click here to submit your or a loved one's WWII story. One submission will be picked at random to be added to the exhibit.
”WWII: 48 Local Stories That Changed the World” runs until March 28, 2010, at the Frazier International History Museum at 829 W. Main Street.
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John LaFollette