thedrifter
05-11-06, 12:43 PM
05/11/2006
The stories of 200 Boyertown area heroes
By: Bernard J. Colan
By Bernard J. Colan
Times Writer
A dozen years after being captured by a small band of volunteers, the voices of World War II veterans from the Boyertown area may finally get to make their escape.
The veterans' stories pour in one ear and then tumble from Barbara Johnson's fingertips to her keyboard as she transcribes oral history to electronic text in one of the most ambitious war history preservation projects ever to emerge in the area.
"It's tough to understand them sometimes," the retired Boyertown schoolteacher admitted. "I just can't seem to get the names of some of the places, so I have to play them back constantly."
Johnson, 66, is on the board of directors of the Boyertown Area Historical Society. She is transcribing the first of hundreds of recordings that society volunteers compiled from 1991 to 1994. They call it their World War II Veterans' Oral History Project.
"It's very time-consuming, but we've had them for so long now, we can't just let them keep sitting there," Johnson said.
It's a daunting task she has taken on, but having the tapes transcribed professionally would cost the historical society more than $11,000, funds that the organization doesn't have.
"We're trying to get the money," Johnson said, "but in the meantime, we've got to start somewhere."
In an effort to raise funds to preserve those voices from the past, the society will host a three-month exposition that will open on Veterans Day, Nov. 11. Essential elements of the exhibit are being borrowed from personal World War II stashes.
Chief among them is the collection of Boyertown's Bruce Updegrove, 66, who has been acquiring World War II memorabilia since he was 10 years old.
For decades, Updegrove, a former U.S. Marine, taught American history at Boyertown Area High School, where his posters, flags and other displays attracted the admiration of students as well as faculty. Currently teaching cultural and physical geography as an adjunct professor at Montgomery Community College, he has agreed to lend a portion of his historic inventory to help make the exposition the finest display of World War II memorabilia in the area.
Updegrove, a founding member of the historical society, was also instrumental in recording the memories that Johnson is busy transcribing. More than a decade ago, he and other volunteers, prominent among them Linette Hulbert, armed themselves with recording devices and set out to gather first-person accounts from 200 men and women who fought for the United States in the years between 1941 and 1945.
"I had already interviewed some World War I marines I had run into, just for myself," Updegrove recalled. "Then Lin called me and asked if I'd be interested in interviewing people from World War II.
"She started getting names, and I picked up some here and there, too, and we basically just started going around interviewing World War II veterans. In every case, they were the most humble people you would ever want to meet.
"Some of them were reluctant to talk at first," Updegrove continued. "But once we got them started, they really opened up. Many of them said they were glad they did, because it was like a catharsis for them.
"I just hope we can preserve their words, maybe even send them to the National Archives in Washington, D.C."
"A project person"
From her winter home in Vero Beach, Fla., Linette Ott Hulbert, 66, said she got the idea for the project from reading the obituaries. Her father founded the Linwood W. Ott Funeral Home on Reading Ave., so she got into the habit of reading the "obits" at a very young age.
"I'm a project person," Hulbert said. "I had time on my hands in the early 1990s, when you were hearing of the 50th anniversary of this and that battle in World War II, and every time I read that another solider died, I thought to myself, 'What a shame that we don't have his story.'
"So with my husband's blessing, my father and I started gathering a few of the names of World War II veterans that we knew, and built the rest of our list from there. Everyone was cooperative with the exception of one man, who said 'All the heroes are dead, and I have nothing to tell you.' He was very adamant."
One of her earliest subjects was Linwood Renninger, at whose 1945 wedding Hulbert and her sister were flower girls.
"He was married at the end of the war, and being very impressionable girls, we thought he was the handsomest soldier in his uniform!" Hulbert said. "One day, many years later, I asked him what he did in the war, and he told me 'I landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day.'
"Well, after I confirmed that, I asked him to sit down and talk to me about it. I was just fascinated to learn not only that he landed with the earliest boats at first light, but also that he was wounded, and he'd never said one word about it before!"
Renninger's participation in the Allied armada from England that landed on Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, gave her the inspiration for her oral history project, Hulbert said, and she set about interviewing other veterans.
"Some of them recognized that I was 'Linny' Ott's girl, and then it was all right. Others seemed to be reluctant to talk to me because I was a female, so I called Bruce Updegrove to ask if he'd go on interviews with me. I knew from high school that he was interested in history, and he agreed to help me," Hulbert said.
Updegrove also helped compile more names, she added.
One of the questions Hulbert said she made it a point to ask each veteran was, "Did you remember killing anyone?"
Invariably her subjects answered, "I just fired in the direction that the shots were coming from," she said.
Each of the volunteers for the World War II Oral History Project had many favorites among the 200 veterans they recorded, but Hulbert and Updegrove seemed to agree that the story of Harold "Giggy" Kline, in particular, stuck in their minds.
Harold "Giggy" Kline
Kline was a ball turret gunner on a bombing mission over Germany when his B-17 crashed, after which he was captured. He spent nearly two years in Stalag Luft 17B, a German prison camp in Krems, Austria, Hulbert recalled.
One week after Easter, 1945, their German captors rounded up the "Luft Gansters" (as they called their American POWs) and marched them toward the American lines to surrender. It took 18 days of marching, of sleeping in barns and fields, of starvation and dysentery and lice, to get there.
"[Kline] told us they were exhausted and starving by the time they finally managed to make it to the top of one last hill, where they could look down and see where they were supposed to be," Updegrove recounted.
"And he said 'There, down in the valley, we saw this huge American flag, just waving in the sunlight, and we all got ourselves into formation and marched down that hill like we were in the biggest parade you ever saw.'
"He had tears in his eyes when he related that to us," Updegrove said. "I had tears in mine, too.
"Stories like that made everything in our project all worthwhile."
Donations for the Boyertown at War exposition can be made care of the Boyertown Area Historical Society, 32 S. Chestnut St., Boyertown, PA 19512. Anyone interested in lending memorabilia for the exhibits, or in helping to transcribe the World War II tapes, should call 610-367-5255.
Ellie
The stories of 200 Boyertown area heroes
By: Bernard J. Colan
By Bernard J. Colan
Times Writer
A dozen years after being captured by a small band of volunteers, the voices of World War II veterans from the Boyertown area may finally get to make their escape.
The veterans' stories pour in one ear and then tumble from Barbara Johnson's fingertips to her keyboard as she transcribes oral history to electronic text in one of the most ambitious war history preservation projects ever to emerge in the area.
"It's tough to understand them sometimes," the retired Boyertown schoolteacher admitted. "I just can't seem to get the names of some of the places, so I have to play them back constantly."
Johnson, 66, is on the board of directors of the Boyertown Area Historical Society. She is transcribing the first of hundreds of recordings that society volunteers compiled from 1991 to 1994. They call it their World War II Veterans' Oral History Project.
"It's very time-consuming, but we've had them for so long now, we can't just let them keep sitting there," Johnson said.
It's a daunting task she has taken on, but having the tapes transcribed professionally would cost the historical society more than $11,000, funds that the organization doesn't have.
"We're trying to get the money," Johnson said, "but in the meantime, we've got to start somewhere."
In an effort to raise funds to preserve those voices from the past, the society will host a three-month exposition that will open on Veterans Day, Nov. 11. Essential elements of the exhibit are being borrowed from personal World War II stashes.
Chief among them is the collection of Boyertown's Bruce Updegrove, 66, who has been acquiring World War II memorabilia since he was 10 years old.
For decades, Updegrove, a former U.S. Marine, taught American history at Boyertown Area High School, where his posters, flags and other displays attracted the admiration of students as well as faculty. Currently teaching cultural and physical geography as an adjunct professor at Montgomery Community College, he has agreed to lend a portion of his historic inventory to help make the exposition the finest display of World War II memorabilia in the area.
Updegrove, a founding member of the historical society, was also instrumental in recording the memories that Johnson is busy transcribing. More than a decade ago, he and other volunteers, prominent among them Linette Hulbert, armed themselves with recording devices and set out to gather first-person accounts from 200 men and women who fought for the United States in the years between 1941 and 1945.
"I had already interviewed some World War I marines I had run into, just for myself," Updegrove recalled. "Then Lin called me and asked if I'd be interested in interviewing people from World War II.
"She started getting names, and I picked up some here and there, too, and we basically just started going around interviewing World War II veterans. In every case, they were the most humble people you would ever want to meet.
"Some of them were reluctant to talk at first," Updegrove continued. "But once we got them started, they really opened up. Many of them said they were glad they did, because it was like a catharsis for them.
"I just hope we can preserve their words, maybe even send them to the National Archives in Washington, D.C."
"A project person"
From her winter home in Vero Beach, Fla., Linette Ott Hulbert, 66, said she got the idea for the project from reading the obituaries. Her father founded the Linwood W. Ott Funeral Home on Reading Ave., so she got into the habit of reading the "obits" at a very young age.
"I'm a project person," Hulbert said. "I had time on my hands in the early 1990s, when you were hearing of the 50th anniversary of this and that battle in World War II, and every time I read that another solider died, I thought to myself, 'What a shame that we don't have his story.'
"So with my husband's blessing, my father and I started gathering a few of the names of World War II veterans that we knew, and built the rest of our list from there. Everyone was cooperative with the exception of one man, who said 'All the heroes are dead, and I have nothing to tell you.' He was very adamant."
One of her earliest subjects was Linwood Renninger, at whose 1945 wedding Hulbert and her sister were flower girls.
"He was married at the end of the war, and being very impressionable girls, we thought he was the handsomest soldier in his uniform!" Hulbert said. "One day, many years later, I asked him what he did in the war, and he told me 'I landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day.'
"Well, after I confirmed that, I asked him to sit down and talk to me about it. I was just fascinated to learn not only that he landed with the earliest boats at first light, but also that he was wounded, and he'd never said one word about it before!"
Renninger's participation in the Allied armada from England that landed on Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, gave her the inspiration for her oral history project, Hulbert said, and she set about interviewing other veterans.
"Some of them recognized that I was 'Linny' Ott's girl, and then it was all right. Others seemed to be reluctant to talk to me because I was a female, so I called Bruce Updegrove to ask if he'd go on interviews with me. I knew from high school that he was interested in history, and he agreed to help me," Hulbert said.
Updegrove also helped compile more names, she added.
One of the questions Hulbert said she made it a point to ask each veteran was, "Did you remember killing anyone?"
Invariably her subjects answered, "I just fired in the direction that the shots were coming from," she said.
Each of the volunteers for the World War II Oral History Project had many favorites among the 200 veterans they recorded, but Hulbert and Updegrove seemed to agree that the story of Harold "Giggy" Kline, in particular, stuck in their minds.
Harold "Giggy" Kline
Kline was a ball turret gunner on a bombing mission over Germany when his B-17 crashed, after which he was captured. He spent nearly two years in Stalag Luft 17B, a German prison camp in Krems, Austria, Hulbert recalled.
One week after Easter, 1945, their German captors rounded up the "Luft Gansters" (as they called their American POWs) and marched them toward the American lines to surrender. It took 18 days of marching, of sleeping in barns and fields, of starvation and dysentery and lice, to get there.
"[Kline] told us they were exhausted and starving by the time they finally managed to make it to the top of one last hill, where they could look down and see where they were supposed to be," Updegrove recounted.
"And he said 'There, down in the valley, we saw this huge American flag, just waving in the sunlight, and we all got ourselves into formation and marched down that hill like we were in the biggest parade you ever saw.'
"He had tears in his eyes when he related that to us," Updegrove said. "I had tears in mine, too.
"Stories like that made everything in our project all worthwhile."
Donations for the Boyertown at War exposition can be made care of the Boyertown Area Historical Society, 32 S. Chestnut St., Boyertown, PA 19512. Anyone interested in lending memorabilia for the exhibits, or in helping to transcribe the World War II tapes, should call 610-367-5255.
Ellie