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Dormont Native Interviews Vets to Preserve History

Dormont native Beth Paull Davey was searching for a volunteer opportunity and, two years later, her respect for veterans and the sacrifices they made for our country are bigger than ever.

Dormont native Beth Paull Davey was searching for a volunteer opportunity and, two years later, her respect for veterans and the sacrifices they made for our country are bigger than ever.

Davey is a volunteer contributor to the Veterans History Project that collects, preserves and makes accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans so that future generations may hear their stories directly and better understand the realities of war.

“Now that my own kids are in school full time, I felt a need to use my time during the day in a more fulfilling way, and I realized how much I missed volunteering,” said the stay-at-home mom about her motive for getting involved in the first place.

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When she was a teenager at Keystone Oaks High School, Davey volunteered at an Easter Seals camp in Bethel Park and loved it. But the veterans project grabbed her attention due to some childhood memories.

“When I was a kid, my dad would talk about growing up during World War II and the sacrifices this entire country made. He’d answer my questions about Korea and Vietnam. I wanted to be a part of an effort to preserve their stories for all of us to remember and learn from.”

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Davey just filmed her 49th interview last week and it continues to be a great experience for not only her, but the vets too.

“Besides the blessing of getting to be a mom to my two kids, this feels like the most important thing I’ve done with my life. It is a gift to hear their stories. It is a privilege to be allowed to record them for others to hear. They are outstanding human beings who all did their part for their country.”

The project is interested in stories from all veterans, from every war, including spouses of veterans, defense workers from WWII and veterans not directly involved with combat. Though right now, Davey said, they’re concentrating on WWII vets since they are the oldest.

“These gentlemen and ladies are in their 80s and 90s,” she said. “So there’s a real sense of urgency to let them tell their stories before it’s too late.”

But younger veterans aren’t out of the question and Davey had the opportunity to talk with a young man who felt compelled by the September 11th attacks to serve his country.

“A young man who approached us about volunteering turned out to be a young Army field medic about to go back for his third tour in Iraq. He said he wanted to do his part in preserving the experience of the men who came before him. During his interview, he told us that his call to duty came to him on Sept. 11, 2001. He was sitting in his 10th grade classroom when they found out about the terrorist attacks on America, and he knew he wanted to go help. He had to wait another year before he was old enough to sign up.”

Even though Davey now lives in Frederick, MD, she found a connection to home with one of her interviews.

“A wonderful surprise was Mr. James Jamison, who it turns out is from Dormont. His dad worked at the Pittsburgh Press at the same time as my great grandfather. He talked about playing a lot of baseball in his youth, the flood of 1936, “midnight at noon” from the steel mill soot and having to change his shirt in the middle of the day, and going to Carnegie Tech (before it was CMU) for a year so that he could get an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. He served as a Navy captain in WWII, Korea and Vietnam.”

Davey graduated from California University of Pennsylvania in 1994 with a degree in television and radio, and this opportunity makes her happy to be back behind a camera again.

Her very first interview really sticks with her:

“James Powell Jr. and another soldier got separated from their unit in Germany in WWII in 1944. They were making a run for it across a farm field, trying to get to a village up ahead, when 12 German soldiers stood up from behind a row of bushes and opened fire on them. His friend was hit three times and went down. A German officer approached Mr. Powell and said, ‘For you, the war is over’. Mr. Powell spent many months as a POW (prisoner of war) in the cold German winter and describes that time as ‘a million dollar experience that I wouldn’t do again for 10 million.’”

And her favorite storyteller is also a WWII vet:

“Alfred Amato was my favorite storyteller of all the vets. A humble, modest, grateful man full of grace and humor. He talked about how the guys he served with in the Army Air Corps during WWII could make anything out of nothing. They built a Jeep from scratch out of found parts at an abandoned airfield. They fashioned an old trailer into a food truck where a few of the more culinary-gifted boys in the unit treated them to delicious feasts that reminded them of home. They made a makeshift shower out of an old oil drum and tubing after they’d been held up in the African desert for two weeks. He got covered in ash when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in Italy. He and his captain saw a plane go down nearby and pulled six men out of the burning wreckage. He is still haunted by the one they couldn’t get free. But it was his story about the moment he walked back into his Italian immigrant father’s deli in Coney Island, NY, when he got home from the war that moved me to tears for the first time during an interview.”

Not only does the true sacrifice that our vets made for our country hit home with Davey but it’s also the selflessness of these heroes.

“They are all so modest and give all the credit away to those who didn’t come home from the wars, but to me, their survival is just as important, so that they can talk about it and we will listen. We can pass their stories down to our children and our grandchildren so they never forget how we got here, what it took, and how very lucky we are.”

For more information on the Veterans History Project, please visit http://www.loc.gov/vets/

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