Barbara Hatch wears hot pink sunglasses from the dollar store. While some are concerned with how you look, Hatch wouldn’t mind if you were purple. Spend one day in her AP History Class and she’ll teach you history remembers how you made people feel. As Founder of Veterans Heritage Project, Hatch makes both veterans and students feel at home. She teaches students to discover their full potential by documenting incredible stories of valor told by veterans who may have never shared their service journey publicly. Through connecting the two communities, she has managed to publish 18 volumes of service stories and impact 56,221 students.
What inspired you to start doing what you do?
I think the real shift would be in the mid 90s, when the movie Saving Private Ryan came out. I was teaching at a boarding school. They [my students] had gone to see the movie and they asked me if the movie was accurate. I went to see the movie but I hate war movies. I can’t look at it. I can read about it. I can talk to people about it. I don’t want to see it in film because I’m a very visual person. But I felt like if I was going to teach history, I needed to go see them. That’s my obligation.
Afterwards I went and got Steven E. Ambrose’s book, “Voices Of D Day.” He interviewed hundreds of D Day veterans. So I read all those and I thought, well, from what I can tell, my parents’ generation was World War II. World War II veterans were my classmates, dads, but they never spoke about it. I didn’t even know that until most of them died. It took another almost 80 years until I knew that.
So I came back and I said, “Well, I can’t speak for the entire movie, but I will tell you that the beach scene seems pretty accurate to me. And I said, but I wasn’t there. In the Phoenix area, there must be some Normandy veterans.” So I went to the phonebook, went to the yellow pages, looked up veterans, and I got the Veterans of Foreign Wars. I wrote a letter to a post because I’m more of a writer than a phone caller. I said, “This was the question my student had. Do you know of any Normandy veterans here in the Valley that would like to come speak with my students?” They put it in their newsletter and I started getting calls literally, every night of the week. From not just Normandy veterans, other World War II veterans too. They were in their 70s. I even got some that were in Vietnam. One of them called from Fountain Hills. He wanted to form a speaker’s group with several other veterans to speak to kids, because he said “we’re afraid that when we pass away, people are going to not rewrite the story. They’re not going to get it right.” He wanted to get different branches of the service. So he went to his VFW Post, and they talked about it. He got some guys. They spoke for about 15 minutes apiece, and he was hilarious. Because there were a couple of them that had a big story, and he’d be cutting them off like, “Your time is up.”
We did that for about maybe five years until that school closed. They followed me to another school. Then I ended up at Cactus Shadows [High School] in Cave Creek.
So I kind of went back to what I already knew I loved – oral history. I thought about what a gift I’m receiving from these veterans. Their stories were off the charts. I’m getting the details, and I am loving every minute of it. They are loving it, because somebody is finally listening. They’ve never told this story. Nobody wants to die with their story. So anyway, I loved it. students loved it, they couldn’t stop talking about it. That went on every year for three different schools. Then inn 2003, Salt River Project, celebrating our state’s Centennial, wanted to sponsor some educational programs. They put out some mini grants of around $3,000 and a student at Cactus Shadows [High School] already had an idea to document the Cave Creek Christmas Pageant. It had been around for 50 years and then went away because the community grew and it changed, but here was this little bin of stuff. That was kind of our practice. That first year, we interviewed a whole bunch of people, everybody from a 71 year old woman who was the first Mary in this Christmas pageant to somebody who had been in it right before it ended. The next year, we built an exhibit and we archived the stuff with Cave Creek Museum. They brought back the pageant, by the way, because of that.
The next year, The Salt River Project opened more grants, and the students said “We want to interview those veterans full out. In other words, not the 15 minute version, the three hour version, if that’s what it takes. We want the rest of the story.” We put in a proposal for that. It happened to coincide with the creation of the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress. Their mission is to archive the stories of America’s Veterans.
So we said, “We’re gonna go get these stories.” Someday, all these guys are going to be gone. These stories belong to the nation. I contacted them, they were videotaped and I made the students write out transcripts. Every word you know, they had to write that story and we published that story. There was a mom of one of the students that first year who offered to help lay out a book. That was Volume I.
We sold some of the books to pay the company that printed the book and that’s the way it started. I’m a believer that when the book comes out, you need to gather them [the veterans and students] together in a meaningful way. I want them to sign my book. To me, they’re rock stars. To me the veterans are my heroes.
What do you feel the Veterans Heritage Project contributes to the community?
Community means people know each other. When we first started the veterans had perceptions of students from TV, and students don’t think about it at all. I think getting to know each other is the definition of community. I find that it’s moved the needle a little bit. Sometimes it’s not meant to be a long term relationship, usually the veterans like it to be a one and done. Other ones have paid for kids to go through college. They have that unity of helping each other out.
What’s your favorite interview or book that VHP has done to date?
It’s hard to pick a favorite. I always revert back to those early ones during the first year. I was at those interviews and they were powerful. The one I think that I really enjoyed writing recently was a veteran we interviewed in 2009. He was a Vietnam Veteran who flew airplanes off an aircraft carrier. He had a hole in his head from when he was a kid and they said he would never be a pilot. So I think I named the story, “He Has a Hole in His Head” or something. He was regrouping with his battalion squadron. They were having a reunion, and he wanted to record as many of their stories as he could for this reunion. He said about 13 and he wanted to start with the Admiral, Stan Arthur. He started as a pilot, and he became the Executive Officer of the group. Then he became the CEO or Commanding Officer, the group. He defines leadership. I could probably name maybe 10 out of 3000 who epitomize the best of what our military does. I mean, they’re humble, they’re the undercurrent in the water, they make you believe that, what they want you to do, you want to do. They listen and empower. Stan was every bit of that. And one thing that he said was “If we were successful, then the credit goes to the team. If we were not successful, then it is mine alone.” That’s the way the military is. You’re the commander, it’s on you. You don’t throw your people under the bus. You don’t point fingers. It’s on you. So I think that is one of the lessons to be learned, even for old people like me.
There’s a veteran in Fountain Hills who just turned 100 who had to parachute into Holland, got immediately captured, interrogated by Heinrich Himmler in Charlamagne Castle, France during World War II. That’s only the beginning of his story. I mean, he was interrogated by Heinrich Himmler, then put in an ancient castle and put in a prison camp. Then when the British came through Dachau in that region in southern Germany, he goes, “Well, I want to see Paris before I go home.” So he’s walking out and the British guy says, “Wait a minute, you need to report to your unit.” He goes, “What are you going to do? Shoot me?” Then he made his way across Europe. The Germans had blown up the bridges when they were retreating and the Allies had laid down pontoon bridges so they could get their troops over. He’d tell the guards “If you let me across, I’ll give you this sword. I took off a dead German officer.” He got to Paris, hot wired a car at one point. You can’t find this stuff. You can’t you cannot find this stuff in history. You can’t. It won’t be there.
What inspires you to continue with the Veterans Heritage Project?
When I was in DC last week for my 50th Peace Corps reunion, I met up with a student from St. Croix where I taught in the early part of my career. He been in the Air Force for 22 years and was now a 50-year-old. When I interviewed him over zoom, he wasn’t going to tell me certain things because they were too difficult, but he wanted me to come back on Zoom to interview his wife and two kids. I had taught his wife back when she was in high school. I learned that after his absences, when he’d come back from some story he was never going to tell me because it was probably very painful, he was checked out. He was there, but he was not there. The effect on families of military service was a huge part of his story. He feels now, like he needs to make amends. I saw him last week and we got to hang out. I hadn’t seen him in, gosh, for 35 years. It was wonderful. So too, it’s not just the veterans, but also where did that kid end up? How are they doing? How has their life gone? I want to live long enough to see some of those. When kids say we can’t do anything to change America, that’s giving up and I will never accept that from you. I haven’t given up and I’m 72. Our country has problems like every country. You’re going to speak up and you’re going to take it on. You don’t just roll over and say let me go play a video game. It’s not acceptable, not from you. It’s plenty of people that will do that because they’re Nimrods, but they don’t have your opportunities, your brains, and your integrity. You’re not allowed to do that. Did the veterans give up? I think if you’re born with privilege, you’ve got to use that. Privilege doesn’t mean you’re born with a million dollars. It means you’re born with something.
Interviewed by Maja Peirce
ISSUED 