Philip Napoli, a professor in the History Department, has devoted a good portion of his career to recording the oral histories of veterans. He is the director of the 可乐视频 , for which he has conducted interviews with hundreds of New York City鈥檚 Vietnam veterans.
This year, Napoli asked two of his students to interview alumni veterans who served in the Vietnam War for inclusion in the 可乐视频 Listening Project, a college-wide, interdisciplinary oral history project that aims to create publicly accessible audio archives of the everyday lives of Brooklyn residents.
Benjamin Cohn, a sophomore and history major, and Kayleigh O鈥橩ane, a junior聽communication major, sat down in the 可乐视频 radio station to record their conversations with U.S. Army veterans Michael O鈥橞rien ’79 of the Fourth Infantry Division and Anthony Wallace ’75 of the First Cavalry Division. Both students logged more than two hours of recorded audio with the men, which Napoli has compiled into a 4-minute podcast.
“Anthony Wallace has a very powerful story,” says O鈥橩ane, a student in one of Napoli鈥檚 pop culture courses. Wallace suffered a back injury from a blast after his bunker was hit, killing two other men who were with him. “It made the war more personal to me. I wasn鈥檛 born then, so the Vietnam War never seemed relevant to my life.” O鈥橩ane adds that, after this experience, she is adding radio broadcaster to the list of careers she is considering.
Cohn is a Macaulay Honors College student who is taking Napoli鈥檚 course on Vietnam. He interviewed O’Brien as part of a class requirement for which he has to interview two veterans and write a paper comparing their experiences.
One of the most striking parts of the conversation for Cohn, who is considering becoming a foreign correspondent, among other career choices that would allow him to explore the globe, was O’Brien’s desire to serve鈥攈e volunteered for the draft鈥攁nd his sense of patriotism.
“It seems like he was among one of the last generations of people who wanted to defend America,” says Cohn. “This guy felt it was a duty.”
For his part, Napoli鈥攚ho has been compiling oral histories of veterans since graduate school, has written a book about the stories of some of the veterans he has met, and counts many veterans among his very good friends鈥攕ays he鈥檚 glad to give the men who served an opportunity to “witness” their stories.
“It鈥檚 therapeutic,” he says, “and a way to make their memories useful.”
He hopes his students are learning, through their Listening Project experiences, “the power of emphatic listening.”
Last spring, 22 classes participated in the Listening Project, contributing raw material that will be housed in the library鈥檚 special collections archive.
