Oral History Projects Pair Students With Members of the 'Greatest Generation'

When Jennifer Damiani, a communications major at Moorpark College, interviewed a former carrier pilot from the Korean War for a personal history project, she grew fascinated with what she learned: the skill involved in landing a plane without a runway, the lack of fear felt by the pilot and how young the Navy trained its fliers.

“I asked him ... how they felt during that time,” said Damiani. “He was reluctant to talk about his personal feelings during that time, as one could only imagine. People forget about the war and the horrible experience.”

Damiani was one of many students who participated in the personal history project last year as part of a modern U.S. history class taught by Patty Colman, history professor at Moorpark College.

For the project, students interview seniors to learn about them, where they were born and their overall life history, Colman said. This semester, Colman is preparing 40 students who will  partner one on one with 40 Moorpark seniors.

After the initial interviews, each student reports to the class on an event from the senior's life. From there, the student creates visual and written research projects about the event, tying in the senior’s experience with it.

For Damiani, an older student returning to school, the assignment seemed like a daunting task at first, but turned into a wonderful experience.

“When you’re first told to do this project, you kind of groan. With working full time and going back to school, it was just another thing to do,” she said. “But it ended up being so wonderful. We need to be reminded of these events in history.”

Damiani said she had a good experience with the project mostly because her senior partner enjoyed talking to her about his past.

“You could just see the sparkle in his eye when he reminisced. I could just see that he was filled with wonderment on his face,” she said.

While hearing the tales of her senior partner, Damiani got hooked on learning about every aspect of the life of carrier pilots and the planes they flew.

“It pulls passion out of you to learn and appreciate what happened during that time,” she said.

“There are a lot of seniors in Moorpark who are an untouched resource and have so much to share and so much to teach,” said Colman, who said she wants her students to be aware of the contributions of the "Greatest Generation."

Colman said the project teaches students how to use an oral history as an additional research source, outside of traditional methods.

“We tend to kind of think of history and you go to the library and check out some books,” Colman said. “Seniors are a resource, and should be looked at as [providing] a research method … Also, they’ll learn so much more through this person who lived it than if they just read the textbook or lectured about it. It makes history come alive.”

The idea to integrate oral histories into her history class had been brewing ever since Colman was at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita and saw another teacher’s students working with seniors there. Colman also worked as a historian for the National Park Service, recording oral histories. Now at Moorpark College she has been able to share her oral history-taking skills with her students.

In addition to the educational benefits of the project, Colman said she hopes her students will gain a better respect for seniors in the community.

“In our society we don’t really respect our elders as we should,” she said. “Not only were they valid and important members of the community then, but also they still are valid and have so much to contribute.”

Colman has had a preview of some of this year’s life stories. She said she spoke to one senior who worked at the Department of Justice during the 1960s. He monitored elections in the South and saw a lot of the political turmoil going on during that time, Colman said.

Another senior, she said, has a family history that goes back four generations in Oxnard. The family originally came from Mexico in the late 19th century.

In the future, Colman hopes these oral histories, which are now being recorded, will be available to the public, researchers and other students in the library.

“We’re losing them [senior citizens] fast,” she said. “The oral histories don’t take up space and to have those for people to listen to would be really important.”

The project will culminate in May with a reception in which all of the seniors, students and family members will attend. The seniors will have the opportunity to take home the visual projects the students created, Colman said.

“We all met the other students' interviewees and saw what they had done during their lives,” said Damiani about last year’s reception. “I couldn’t have thought of a better ending.”