I am glad so many people are staying at home so we can get this covid virus under control. So How do I know you are staying home? Because of the statistics generated here by the people reading this blog. For about a year the top city reading this blog has been Chicago, but with a 100% bounce rate I think it is a bot collecting information. Number two has always been Seattle which makes sense as the largest city in Washington. Spokane was usually near number five, and the cities between Spokane and Seattle was almost always different each week depending on what was written each week. Spokane Valley the city east of Spokane seldom showed in the top 15 cities.
For the last month Kent has been the number one city, and Seattle and Spokane are down in the #4 Group (they are alphabetical when they have the same number of sessions). So instead of reading the blog at work, people seem to be reading from their homes. Keep it up and we will be able to meet in person again soon.
I would like to make you aware of a project that may be of great interest to your organization and many of your members.
I am the director of a non-profit initiative known as Stories Behind the Stars, under the auspices of The Greatest Generations Foundation.
The ambitious goal of this project is to collect short profiles of all of the 400,000+ US World War II fallen in one online database. There will be a smartphone app that will allow anyone visiting a war memorial or cemetery to scan the name of the fallen and get a link to automatically take them to his/her story. This will work at Arlington National Cemetery, Honolulu’s National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, even memorials in Washington state. It will make visits to the final resting places of our World War II fallen a much richer experience. Whereas now, a visitor just sees names and dates, when this project is finished, a visit to any WWII memorial or gravesite will come with that person’s story.
As a genealogy organization, you are aware that resources online now make genealogical research easier than ever. I learned this first hand over the past three years. I have had a lifelong interest in history, and particularly enjoyed reading memoirs. After the 2016 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, a lot of news coverage was given to the remaining World War II veterans. It bothered me that little attention was given to any of the 400,000+ fallen who did not come home. WWII memoirs all mentioned how much these fallen meant to a victory they did not enjoy. I decided to do something about this.
I began a daily personal passion project to start writing about these mostly forgotten heroes. Each day I wrote a profile of one of the fallen on the 100th anniversary of his/her birthday. I recorded these stories in a blog at www.ww2fallen100.blogspot.com. I shared it with various World War II groups on Facebook. Others started joining me to write these stories and there are now more than 1,200 of these short profiles, including more than a dozen from Washington (see http://ww2fallen100.blogspot.com/search?q=washington) that have been read more than one million times. The newspaper in the town where I grew up, the Pueblo Chieftain, did a story about my efforts that was picked up by many papers around the country (see https://www.chieftain.com/7070e3a4-c500-11e8-9745-33c162a7202a.html). The project was slated to end this September with the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. However, at the encouragement of others, I decided to expand this project so that the stories of all of the 400,000+ US World War II fallen can be told.
The 400,000+ number is very daunting, but it is much more manageable for western states. In the case of Washington, WWII losses were probably around 6,000. I already have access to a database that has 5,000+ Washington related names. I just need help finding people who want to write profiles of the Washington fallen.
Ancestry.com has generously agreed to provide free access to their research tools (Ancestry.com, Newspapers.com, and Fold3.com) to anyone helping me with this project.
I created the website www.storiesbehindthestars.org to promote and manage this project. Though it just barely started, I already have volunteers helping from a dozen states.
The reason I am contacting WSGS is that I am sure you know of many, many Washington residents who would be interested in helping with this project. I need volunteers to research and write the stories of these ~6,000 Washington World War II fallen. It takes less than 45 minutes to research and write the average story. I have created a YouTube page (see https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6iv4ZzBam5y_yXk546P7Fu6bEIrz9jb5) with short training videos showing how to do the research.
Can you share information about my project with your members? At this time of social distancing, I think this project would be a wonderful use of time for those with their skills.
Feel free to call or email me to move this discussion further.
I’m happy to share that My Heritage is giving everyone FREE and unlimited access to MyHeritage In Color™ from March 23 to April 23, so that people everywhere can join in the fun of colorizing their black and white photos. Ordinarily only 10 photos can be colorized by users who do not have a Complete plan, but now, you can colorize as many photos as you’d like for free.
Colorizing photos is the perfect activity
for anyone who is isolated at home. We invite everyone to pull out their
family photo albums, colorize their photos, and start reminiscing. Over
the coming month, anyone who shares their colorized photos on Twitter,
Facebook, or Instagram with the hashtag #ColorBeatsCoronavirusBlues and
tags @MyHeritage will enter a weekly draw. Each week we’ll select one
lucky winner who will receive a free MyHeritage Complete subscription!
Please share the news on your social
channels and with your audience so they can make the most of this
opportunity and colorize their photos.
Well it looks like vital records bill 1550 that was introduced into the Washington Legislature this year is dead. Click here to see the bill.
All bills had to be out of committee by February 11 or they died in the regular session, and House Bill 1550 never even had a hearing. It could come back if they have a special session.
Officials from Washington DC were in Seattle meeting with Puget Sound Native American Tribes: Click Here to read the whole story. https://mynorthwest.com/1715022/national-archives-tries-re-set-seattle-closure/
Looks like they are setting up the bureaucracy to administer the Vital Records Law they published last year, but I saw 50 years for death, marriage and divorce records as a new section in this bill, so are they trying to sneak in 50 years this year?
Well it looks like there is a lot of people interested in keeping the Seattle National Archives open, including our attorney general: click here or use this URL: https://mynorthwest.com/1691475/solutions-emerging-seattle-national-archives-debacle/?fbclid=IwAR02wvH4L2pQe1c8w5tXQL1u_TjeP-k2U_9XV6tqVmSffTGuRBnmTsLeePM
On Monday, January 13, 2020, the staff at the National Archives at
Seattle received notification that within the next four years, the
facility will be closed, and the records will be transferred to the NARA
facilities in Kansas City, Missouri or Riverside, CA.
The National Archives at Seattle has 50,000 case files from the
Chinese Exclusion Act from Chinese who entered the U.S. through the
ports of Seattle, Sumas, Port Townsend, Washington; Portland, Oregon;
and Vancouver, B.C. from 1882 to 1943. A dedicated staff of local
volunteers is indexing these files. If these records are moved 1,000
miles away, this valuable work will end.
Anyone who has ever gotten research assistance from the National
Archives staff appreciates their vast institutional knowledge of the
records. This will be lost if the National Archives is closed and moved
from the Pacific Northwest.
Call the National Archives at 1-86-NARA-NARA (1-866-272-6272) or contact them at archives.gov/contact
Please call your senators, congressional representatives and let them
know you want these records to remain at the National Archives in
Seattle.
Thank you.
Trish Hackett Nicola
Blog Editor
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