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History Museum's Curator Honoring Arcadia's Veterans

Dana Dunn is engaging in a project telling the stories of Arcadians who fought in war.

“One evening, it was around dusk, I was walking along the ship and I see this plane coming in, and I thought it was one of our own,” says Al Bippert, his voice emotive, deliberate and steady. He speaks in fragments as he remembers events from more than 60 years ago during his time in the U.S. Navy.

“It wasn’t more than 200 to 300 feet away. I was looking at the kamikaze pilot and he was looking at me. We were eyeballing each other as he went by before he dove into the ship in front of us. We were so lucky, all of us on our ship.”

Bippert, an Arcadian, is a World War II veteran, and the anecdote recounted above was part of a speech he gave in 2009 to mark the opening of the veteran’s dedication at the Ruth and Charles Gilb Arcadia Historical Museum.

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But if Dana Dunn, curator at the museum, sees her dreams come to fruition, visitors will soon have unique access to a variety of wartime reminisces from a whole host of Arcadian war veterans – including Bippert.

“I’m just trying to bring the museum into the 21st century,” said Dunn, in reference to a series of upcoming renovations, which includes plans to install a number of visual touch screens and an accompanying audio tour.

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Using this technology, Dunn hopes to publicly display the small archive of oral histories she has collected over the years, including videos and audio recordings of war veterans discussing their time not only in WWII, but also Korea and Vietnam.

“There will be a lot of first hand stories,” said Dunn. “And it will be interactive. That’s how people learn – learning without actually realizing it.”

Dunn has been working on the project since 2009, but has managed only a handful of recordings thus far. This is because the time it takes to prepare and research for each interview is long and laborious, requiring that she does much of the work on the project in her own time.

“I like to do a number of interviews with them before I even begin to think of recording their stories,” said Dunn, who said that these preliminary interviews are necessary for her to build the trust of her interviewees.

“Once I know a little about what they’ve done and where they’ve been on duty I can do a little research so that the next time I meet them I can ask more pertinent questions…flesh their stories out properly,” she said. 

Then there’s the matter of sensitivity. Reliving wartime memories can be an understandably painful experience, and some have discussed the harrowing things they have witnessed only vary rarely, let alone in front of a camera. However, Dunn believes that her time spent recording the oral histories of Native Americans has provided her with the deftness of touch necessary to ask the right questions at the right time.

One of the people Dunn has worked with is Gene Glasco, a Vietnam veteran and president of the . In a filmed recording, Glasco chronicles his experiences in the Navy from his training in San Diego to his active service in such places as the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. In one such story he recalls his arrival at the Annapolis Hotel in Saigon – his first station of duty.

“The minute I arrived I was put on a metal folding chair on the roof of the hotel,” says Glasco, seated before a backdrop of war memorabilia, including some of his military clothing. “My job was to look for any traffic that was covered in sandbags because that’s what the hotel was often attacked by: children throwing bags inside.”

Glasco continues, “The problem was, by sitting on the roof for so long, I suffered from over exposure to the sun and I got real sick – all within the first 24 hours.”

Dunn said that no specific date has been given to green-light the project, and that it is very much contingent upon receiving the necessary funding. She did say, however, that should more Arcadian war veterans wish to add their story to the oral histories archive she would be delighted to work with them. Her contact details are provided below.

Floretta Lauber, president of the Arcadia Historical Museum Foundation, was also unable to shed more light as to when the oral histories could go on public display, but she did say that the foundation will be making in the next two weeks an historic announcement about a special project planned for the museum.

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