EVERY VETERAN HAS A STORY. CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, MONTEREY BAY WANTS YOURS.

This fall, Enid Ryce, coordinator of the School of Creative Arts, will lead an effort to record the stories of local veterans as part of the Veterans History Project (VHP). Created by Congress in 2000 as part of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, the VHP collects, preserves and makes accessible the personal accounts of American wartime veterans so that future generations may hear their stories and better understand the realities of war. Some of the stories will also be featured in museum exhibits at the Monterey Museum of Art and at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Ryce was invited to create a special collection for the Library of Congress because of her ongoing Planet Ord project. The collection will be presented at a ceremony at the library in 2017. Anyone who would like to help with story collection is invited to attend an oral history workshop led by CSUMB instructor Kristin LaFollette. Workshops will be held at noon on Sept. 16 on the CSUMB campus and at 2 p.m., Sept. 21, at the Pacific Street facility of the Monterey Museum of Art. Veterans’ stories will be collected on Oct. 10, 17 and 24 at the museum, or by appointment. Eligible to participate are U.S.military veterans who served in any capacity from World War I through the present and who are no longer serving. Civilians who served in support of a U.S. war effort in a professional capacity also are welcome to participate. For more information, contact Enid Ryce at ebryce@csumb.edu