WW2 & Kentuckians: Voices of a Generation

Welcome to our website, ?World War II and Kentuckians: Voices of a Generation.

     This website developed from HIS 399, a junior research seminar about World War II. I have been collecting oral histories of World War II for about five years, and have interviewed a number of people in Rowan County. In 2005, Mr. Ed Burtner, Winchester?s City Manager, wrote a letter asking me if Morehead State had any interest in working with a veterans? group that had collected oral histories of Winchester veterans from World War II through the current war. I traveled to Winchester to meet with Mr. Burtner, Don Rose, and Richard Doughty. I learned that they had spent several years videotaping veterans and that their work was archived at the Winchester Public Library. I checked out a few taped interviews, talked to several history majors, and planned a course.

     In the fall semester of 2005, students in my HIS 399 course viewed the tapes, conducted research in the primary and secondary sources, and settled on the creation of a website to disseminate their work. Messrs. Burtner, Rose, and Doughty came to the class, and brought with them Gordon Long, John Cox, and Ernest Snowden, three remarkable veterans who shared their experiences with the class.

     This website is the product of that class. The students learned from it. I learned from it. It is my hope that others will learn from it as well. Each generation has a story to tell, but fortunately not every generation has a war to fight. When Tom Brokaw chose the title ?The Greatest Generation,? he named not only a book but a remarkable generation who sacrificed a lot of their present so we could have a future. We owe them more than these pages can say. We can only pay the debt if we learn the lessons.

The following letter was written by Yvonne Honeycutt Baldwin, Ph.D., on behalf of the students involved in this project and Morehead State University. Her continued leadership and guidance through this process has been inspirational, and she is the driving force behind this project. We are indebted to her for her continued support of this project and her belief in the cause to which this project is dedicated.