veteranslegacy
Digital expressions of love are often quick, disposable and cheap, yet they are difficult to delete forever. Thoughtful, hand-written love letters and timeless old film photographs, on the other hand, are irreplaceable once they are destroyed.
For Jennifer Johnson Bryant, the photograph of her grandparents embracing in a passionate kiss on their wedding day — just one day before he left to fight in World War II for a year — is a treasure that gets more valuable every day since it was taken on July 11, 1944.
Bryant, a development manager at Lexmark, said preserving her family’s history is all part of a larger book project she is working on with 9th District Councilman Jay McChord called “A Veteran’s Legacy...In Love.” The project is focusing on preserving the love stories of veterans, young and old, and creating a platform for people to share their stories or their families’ stories of love in times of war.
“For me, the big thing is I have a heart for veterans and a heart to capture stories that help bridge the gap through generations,” McChord said.
McChord published another book two years ago, “A Veteran’s Legacy,” which honors veterans and captures the military experience. To follow that up, “A Veteran’s Legacy...In Love” will capture the experiences of those who served in light of the relationships with their loved ones.
When Bryant heard about the project, she knew her grandparents’ story would be perfect. When Bryant’s grandmother Dale Johnson died in 1991, her grandfather Kenneth Johnson was going through old photos to use at his wife’s funeral.
“It was a really special time because it was just the two of us and he had all of these grocery sacks full of photos and folded up notes that I had never seen before,” Bryant said about the day when she was just a teenager. “He was very private about them and didn’t let me read any of them. They were their personal letters.”
Bryant secretly saved the photo of her grandparents kissing on their wedding day and was glad she did because shortly after the funeral, her grandfather burned every last photo, letter and other pieces of correspondence with his late wife out of respect for their relationship. Bryant explained that a lot of older veterans and their wives made pacts to burn their personal letters to each other when one spouse passed away.
More than 20 years later, Bryant cherishes the photo she secretly took from her grandfather’s pile, and McChord drew a large replica of the tiny print for her to keep.
The urgency to preserve the love stories of veterans is a task that the duo now takes seriously, especially since more and more World War II veterans die every day. “A Veterans Legacy...In Love” will preserve the stories of American veterans from all wars fought, not just World War II.
“While we still have these people, we both feel this tremendous sense of urgency to learn what they experienced and get this history down,” Bryant said.
The other clock Bryant and McChord are racing against is the Kickstarter clock. Through Kickstarter (an online funding platform for creative endeavors) the project must be fully funded (with a goal of $30,000) by mid-July. The amount will allow the book to be self-published and put an entire infrastructure into place to allow veterans and their families to share their love stories.
“We want to build a hub for everything,” Bryant explained.
She said already they are meeting many people who want to share their stories, and each entry in the book will be approximately 1,200 words long and include photos.
McChord added, “It actually will generate a platform that is encompassing with social media and a website that will host these stories.”
Ultimately, he would like to provide people with an easy way to share their stories or the stories of their loved ones before they are lost forever.
McChord said while he was working on “A Veteran’s Legacy,” he noticed a theme of love standing out, especially in the old photos. “What we’ve seen happen is, these picture have amazing love stories behind them, a story of commitment,” he said.
“And we have seen such an assault on the family and upon marriage and upon what commitment and sacrifice looks like,” he added.
The project also is important because it preserves history, showing it through a different lens in a way that honors, remembers and heals.
“I have a great concern that we are losing these stories,” McChord said. “For me the thing that I see is I’ve gotten to be friends with so many World War II vets, and I realize what a huge store houses of information and stories they are.”
Part of the issue in many cases, he said, is getting the veterans to open up and tell their stories.
“The interesting dynamic is the veterans themselves will generally not tell the story, it’s their families,” he said. “Veterans are very modest, most do not go seeking the limelight or accolades.”
Click here to visit the Kickstarter campaign, for more information on the project or to make a donation.