You probably know the City of College Station has a lot of its history preserved in the form of documents, maps and photos. But it may surprise you that we’ve also preserved our history by recording the stories of the people who lived it.
The city’s online historic database, Project HOLD, has a large collection of stories gathered through interviews with people who remember the city’s early days. The oral history collection focuses on the stories of our community’s veterans.
Included are interviews with World War II veterans who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, flew bombers in the Pacific theatre and sailed on battleships in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, along with Korean War veterans who fought at the Chosin Reservoir and Vietnam veterans who were prisoners of war.
What’s missing from our collection are the stories of men and women who served in our most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you are a veteran of those campaigns, we’d love to document your stories.
While the project is primarily focused on veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, all local veterans are welcome to participate. The interviews will be recorded digitally, transcribed and deposited in Project HOLD. The interviews will build on our extensive oral history collection from the last 25 years that has preserved the histories of veterans from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.
If you’re interested in participating, contact me at heritageprogram@cstx.gov or 979-764-3491.
