FSU gathering items from untold WWII

An FSU graduate's contribution prompted a history professor to collect objects that tell stories of the war that the history books don't.

Kevin Dougherty had spent hours as a child listening to his father talk about the photos he had taken as an Army photographer during World War II.

There were GIs peeling potatoes, emaciated survivors leaving the concentration camps, even a side view of George Patton urinating in the Rhine.

So the younger Dougherty was distressed to find these and other mementos lumped with his father's recyclables and other trash in the garage of his Davie home several years ago.

"I guess he thought these kinds of things were readily available to be studied," said Dougherty, a sergeant with the Metro-Dade Police Department. "He's a very modest man, and I guess he thought the contributions he made were too insignificant to really matter."

Dougherty salvaged them and called his alma mater, Florida State University, looking for someone who might want to preserve his 83-year-old father's photos.

Almost three years later, FSU has launched an all-out effort to amass the keepsakes of those who served this country from 1941 to 1945 for an Institute on World War II and the Human Experience.

Bill Oldson, the history professor organizing the effort, doesn't just want items that might seem valuable, such as medals or uniforms or helmets.

He wants everything. Letters, Photos, notes, memoirs, maps, books -- anything to document a war that enlisted 13 million Americans and employed millions more in the defense industry.

It will be a tribute to those who did their duty but didn't make the history books. It will document a side of the war rarely explored.

It all started with the Langfords

Oldson said it is an idea that he's had for a while. But he didn't have the Resources to begin gathering and archiving items when Dougherty showed up with his father's photos.

In fact, it wasn't until a couple with connections to FSU began worrying about what would happen to their wartime mementos that his mission became clear.

George Langford, who founded the Municipal Code Corp. in Tallahassee, had hundreds of wartime letters to his mother from his two brothers, his sister and himself. His wife, Marion, was concerned: "I kept saying, 'What in the world are we going to do with them?"

The Langfords, who have a history of donating to FSU, turned over their letters to the school, and the idea for an archives was born.

But not before he spent a weekend reading every letter. It was an emotional experience for Langford, who served in the Army and lost a brother in the Philippines 10 days before the Japanese surrendered.

"I had never done that before, and I read them and it just tore me apart," said Langford, taking an emotional moment to reflect on his brother's death 53 years earlier.

With Langford's support, the archives gained momentum and Oldson began a nationwide collection of artifacts, official histories and personal accounts.

He has traveled to military reunions across the country. He has placed blurbs in the company newsletters of Boeing and Hughes Aircraft in hopes of finding defense workers.

His work has paid off. People show up daily with pieces of their past. He has model ships, medals, even an aluminum and steel sea chest made from the remnants of a crashed Japanese plane. But he cherishes the letters most of all.

"So we're not doing so badly and . things are getting better instead of worse," writes a Thomasville, Ga., man to his wife in January 1944. "So chin up; stout fellow; and all that sort of thing, old girl, the best is yet ahead. And before long, I'll be able to take you in my arms and hold you for a long time -- and even when I let you go, you will still be there to come to my arms whenever I wish. For I love you so much, sweetheart"

Recently, 73-year-old Doug Wilkinson of Tallahassee showed up at Oldson's office with a yellow folder filled with his memorabilia. He was a 19-year-old landing craft operator during the Normandy invasion.

For now, Oldson is cataloging the memorabilia and placing it in offices of the Bellamy Building. But he's trying to place the archives in Dodd Hall's basement.

"I'm very worried, with the rapid demise of the veterans, what will happen to this stuff," Oldson said. "I don't want people to forget and I don't want this material lost."

Lenora LaPeter covers higher education. She can be reached at 509-2306.