NORWICH – Two Chenango County high school students’ interviews of local World War II veterans will appear in between segments of an upcoming 15-hour film documentary premiering Sept. 23 on WSKG television.
Norwich High School Junior Alexis Blatcher and Oxford Academy Junior Craig Champion were selected by their respective history teachers to participate in the project last spring. The film, titled “The War,” co-produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, is an epic that focuses on the stories of citizens from four geographically distributed American towns that are designed to represent any town in the United States that went through the war’s four devastating years.
Six years in the making, “The War” focuses on the stories of citizens from these communities who take the viewer through their own personal and harrowing journeys into war. Their stories paint a portrait of how the war altered their lives and those of their neighbors, as well as the country they helped to save for generations to come.
A grant received from the National Center of Outreach enabled WSKG with the resources to produce the local content. Eleven local high school students from throughout the Southern Tier conducted interviews with local veterans and others affected. WSKG’s Director of Television Production and Programing, Brian Frey, also conducted interviews locally that will be aired around the broadcast.
Blatcher said she was very excited when her social studies teacher, Dr. Eric Erickson, asked her to participate. An interest in pursing a career in film fueled her enthusiasm. “It was a great opportunity to take a look at what making a film actually entails,” she said.
She also found her interviews with Norwich veterans John Dolan and Hoyt Adsit “quite something.”
“Our generation considers them heroes. But if you talk to any one of them, they don’t consider themselves heroes, just every day guys who volunteered for war like everybody did. They said the real heroes are the ones that never came back,” Blatcher said. “The whole idea toward volunteering and going to war is definitely not the same today. Years ago, your didn’t think about it you just did it. Most people today tend to distance themselves as far away from it as possible.”
The New York State Veterans’ Home in Oxford was the setting for Craig Champlin’s interview with Elbert “Bud” Mohr. The high school student said he already knew of Mohr’s war experience in the Pacific Theater before his history teacher Roger Carey asked him to participate in the project.
“I knew about him from the American Legion,” Champlin said. “I knew he was in the two major battles in Japan, but I was surprised that he didn’t hold anything back and that he expressed his feelings about his enemies.”
Mohr told Champlin how much pride the Japanese had for their country and how hard they fought to protect their families. “He said he had never seen that kind of commitment before. They fought harder and harder the closer we got to Tokyo,” Champlin said.
Champlin plans a career in the military, and said the film project was a good, first learning experience.
Blatcher and Champlin were guests at a preview reception of Frey’s interviews at the studio in Johnson City on Aug. 23. The event featured live music from the era. Prior to premiering his interviews with local veterans, Frey said the event of World War II “became a larger experience” for the high school students who participated.
WKSG President and Chief Executive Officer Brian Sickora said, “We are all better for their (the local veteran’s) stories and grateful for the service that PBS provides us to share them.”
“They came from the greatest generation, but they wouldn’t tell you that because that’s how humble they are,” Sickora said.
During the screening, the filmmaker said he felt “honor-bound to tell the war’s story in ordinary people’s point of view in order to bear witness to what they went through.”
Ken Burns has been making documentary films for more than 30 years. Since the Academy Award nominated “Brooklyn Bridge” in 1981, he has gone on to direct and produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made.
The broadcast of this two-week, seven-part series will take place for four nights the first week beginning Sept. 23 from 8 to 10 p.m. and three nights the second week from 8 to 10:30 p.m.
In participation with other public broadcasting stations, WSKG is collecting stories from veterans about World War II to publish on their website. Visitors are invited to share their World War II stories, whether a veteran or someone who was otherwise affected by war, by logging on to www.wskg.org.
Norwich teacher and World War II history expert Dr. Erickson said he, too, wanted to record ‘the greatest generation” before they passed. When contacted in Iraq (where he is teaching in the Ministerial Training Development Center at the Ministry of Defence), Erickson said the two men that Blatcher interviewed have very interesting stories.
“I just wish one of my dad’s pals, Ralph St. Denny, had had his story captured before he died. He was a crewman on a very famous submarine in combat against the Imperial Japanese Navy,” he wrote in an e-mail.