History is Written by the Survivors

We are all witness to history, but few of us and our stories will make it into the history books. Instead, history is being told in public forums, documentaries, and dramatized through film and literature.

We are told stories by our elders, sometimes veterans. They are told matter-of-fact and since we know about the person and their background, there is no need to fill in the gaps. But these stories carry so much potential. In the right hands and with the right creativity, we can turn these anecdotes into a new literary history.

I am part of the last of the Cold War generation. The generation old enough to remember the Berlin War falling, but not old enough to realize it’s significance. Although, for me, it meant a bit more because my dad was a Cold War veteran. He’d tell me stories about hanging his feet out of a Huey just West of the East German border while on missile lock. Our parents grew up with “duck and cover drills” in case of nuclear attack, Woodstock and Vietnam are part of our collective unconscious, but the only war we knew came from watching G.I. Joe.

Then The Wall fell.

I wondered what war was over because I didn’t know one was going on. Shortly there after came the first conflict in the Gulf and what I’d grown up to believe was a war turned out to be nothing like I expected. I watched green tinted blubs live on CNN and wondered who the enemy was and why our guys weren’t getting killed. It was more like watching G.I. Joe in fact.

My mother was a baby boomer, but never quite made it to a full-blown hippy. My grandfather was in the Navy in WWII and worked off an island in the Pacific repairing airplanes. He said the only action he saw was when a pair of American fighters that shot down a Japanese Zero not far from his island. He also told me a story of how the natives of the island brought back the head of an escaped Japanese soldier. My great-grandfather on my father’s side had his hand shot and his back riddled with shrapnel in WWI and eventually died of Pneumonia from his exposure to mustard gas.

I can tell these stories just as matter-of-fact as my family told them to me using my imagination to fill in gaps and add detail. As I get older I realize we are losing these stories. There are no surviving WWI veterans, just under 500,000 WWII veterans still alive, and just over 600,000 Vietnam survivors. These are our parents’ and grandparents' generation, both of which are fading into memory everyday.

In a week, my cousin Jaimie Peterson and I will be presenting at a writer’s conference. Jaimie’s dad was a Vietnam veteran who suffered from PTSD. He coped with his illness by creating art, which inturn inspired Jaimie to become an art therapist. Jaimie started telling me these stories about her dad, not only his experiences in Vietnam but also his interactions with people and other vets. And although Jaimie knows how to create visual art, she struggled to write and she really wanted to tell his story.

So she asked me for help, and for a few years now we’ve been collaborating and trying to turn her dad’s story into a memoir. The writer’s conference will be a first for both of us. Jaimie has been to and presented at many art and therapy conferences, and I’ve been to many teaching conferences, but neither of us have been to a writer’s conference. This will be Jaimie’s opportunity not only to showcase her father’s art but begin to tell his story on a public forum.

We all have our own stories. We’ve all heard our family’s stories. The challenge for us and for all writers is the attempt to tell those stories. And not all stories are about war, but most are about surviving. Surviving a troubled childhood, surviving a traumatic event, a natural disaster, a harrowing journey…

What’s your survivor story?

Below is the link for the writer’s conference we’ll be attending...you know, if you’re interested.

https://geminiink.org/writers-conference/