Upper Arlington veterans spotlighted in video series

The missions of two former Upper Arlington residents who, respectively, survived the attack on Pearl Harbor and served as an intelligence officer for covert operations in Laos during the Vietnam conflict will be highlighted as part of a video series to be launched by the Upper Arlington Historical Society on Veterans Day.

In preparation for the move into the new Upper Arlington High School prior to the 2021-22 school year, language arts teacher Melissa Hasebrook unearthed close to 40 videos of interviews with local military veterans her students conducted during the early 2000s.

Shortly after, staffers at the Upper Arlington Senior Center came across four boxes containing more than 150 videos of central Ohio veterans filmed during the late 1990s and early 2000s by the agency's Armed Forces Group. Those videos were found as the staff prepared for the relocation of the senior center to the planned Upper Arlington Community Center.

In both cases, the videos were donated to the historical society. A small group of volunteers has spent the past year poring over the old VHS and 8mm video cassettes to see how much of the content could be shared with the public in a new Veterans Oral History Project.

"Our mission is to discover, preserve and celebrate, and I think this does all three," said Kristin Greenberg, historical society executive director. "We've discovered these tapes, we've preserved what they are saying and now it's time to celebrate these folks."

The initial celebration will come in the form of two videos the historical society will release via its website, uahistory.org/, and the Upper Arlington History Trail website uahistorytrail.upperarlingtonoh.gov/, which is maintained through a partnership between the historical society and the city of Upper Arlington.

One recording is 11 minutes and features Edward Hannah, who recounted surviving Japan's surprise attack on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

The other is a 25-minute video of Don Cherry, a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer who also worked with the CIA as U.S. Special Operations Forces secretly worked with tribal forces in Laos during the 1950s and 1960s to launch guerilla attacks against enemy forces in North Vietnam.

In both cases, the men featured in the videos are now deceased.

According to Greenberg and historical society volunteers Carolyn Barger and Erik Yassenoff, who, along with historical society past president Charlie Groezinger, historical society board member Bryan Warman and UA High School history teacher Frank Tuttle are leading the project, the videos showcase the veterans' experiences serving their country.

"Oral history is such a wonderful primary source of information," Greenberg said. "As people weave the history into their own personal story and kind of lead you through their thought processes, it's really unique."

In order to produce the videos, the Veterans Oral History Project team had to painstakingly review the content of each video.

The process included dusting off VCRs from both Greenberg and Yassenoff.

Barger and Yassenoff estimated they spent 40 to50 hours watching the interviews and presentations.

The group also had to identify content that was most interesting and usable. Some of the videos posed challenges because team members at times lacked historical context or the cinematography was of poor quality.

The team had to edit hours of content to produce videos that told seamless and concise stories. Yassenoff also donated about $1,000 to have the videos that will be released converted from tape to digital formats.

"As a group, we looked at which veterans' stories might be good for the bigger task of rolling out these videos for the community," Barger said. "The two videos we're putting out are very different in terms of how the information is captivated."

The videos to be released on Veterans Day on Nov. 11 will be the jumping-off point for the project, and those spearheading it hope to release two more featuring other local veterans about Memorial Day 2024.

From its current stock of videos, the group plans to produce eight to 10 videos that will be released roughly each six months.

However, the team also hopes to enlist local high school students to begin a new phase of the project, where the stories of more recent veterans are captured and shared with the community.

"Right now, because of the sources of the videos, we really just have World War II and Vietnam," Yassenoff said. "We're hoping that some students at the high school can help us out with interviewing not just the remaining World War II, Vietnam and Korean veterans, but also those who were in Desert Storm, those who were in Operation Freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq."

Historical society members said the project carries out the mission of their organization.

For Barger and Yassenoff, the volunteer work is a continuation of work they've done over the past decade to help recognize men and women who served.

Barger is a former assistant executive director for Honor Flight Columbus Inc., which seeks to honor America's senior veterans with trips to Washington, D.C., to visit the nation's memorials.

"When I worked with Honor Flight, the mission is, 'Honor, share, celebrate.' We do a good job of taking them on trips to D.C., but the sharing of the stories for other generations is something I love," she said.

Yassenoff was a leader of a campaign that began in 2018 to raise funds for the renovation and enhancement of Veterans Plaza at Mallway Park, 2096 Arlington Ave. That project, completed in fall 2020, included raising $125,000 in private funds, $200,000 in state grants and $106,100 from the city of Upper Arlington to upgrade the portion of the park that is dedicated to recognizing the community’s veterans.

"From my perspective, it's an extension of what we've done over the past almost decade regarding the plaza and other activities in Upper Arlington and kind of enhances the telling of those stories," he said. "I come from a family that served in the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War I, World War II and I had a couple relatives in Vietnam, but I never chose to serve.

"It's probably the biggest regret in my life, especially having been in D.C. during the 9/11 attacks, that I did not serve after I finished college.”

He said working on projects to honor veterans is “a way I can give back to those veterans and their families for their sacrifices that I was not willing to make myself."

Greenberg said she hopes the first two videos will garner attention so momentum can build to continue the project well into the future.

"I hope that it inspires others in the community to be interested in oral history and that it sparks a few students or even other volunteers to help us do other oral histories in the community," she said.

nellis@thisweeknews.com

@ThisWeekNate

This article originally appeared on ThisWeek: Upper Arlington veterans spotlighted in video series