What can people expect to find on the website?

Home Page
 alphabetical listing of over 4000 individuals are in the process of being catalogued on the website. This is pretty remarkable when you think that there were only about 38,000 people living in Eau Claire at the time.

By clicking on a veteran's name, users can access information (news clippings, photographs, memorabilia, and memoirs) each Chippewa Valley resident who served in World War II. 

Foreword
 introduction to World War II and the website

Preface
 statement explaining the inspiration, background, intention, and scope of the website

Chronology
 list of key events from December 7, 1941 to September 2, 1945

About Diz
 brief biographical sketch of Harold (Diz) Kronenberg

Glossary
 collection of brief explanatory notes, abbreviations, and specialized vocabulary to aid the user

Reflections
 articles written by Harold (Diz) Kronenberg about World War II. By clicking on the name of a person, place, or topic, users can read the memoirs of Diz.

POWs
 German and Japanese prisoners of war from the Chippewa Valley. By clicking on the name of a veteran, users can read information about a prisoner of war.

Letters Home
 list of veterans who wrote letters that were published in the Leader or Telegram. By clicking on the name of a veteran, users can read information about the veteran and the article/s containing the veteran's letter/s home to relatives and/or friends.

Decorations
 pictures of the military awards referenced in news clippings

Airplanes
 pictures of the airplanes referenced in news clippings

Currency
 pictures of the currency veterans brought back to the United States from foreign soil on which they served

More War Stories
 articles from the Perry scrapbooks that were not written about specific veterans but that are about things people back home in the Chippewa Valley did to support the war effort. Articles are categorized under such headings as People, Places, Topics, Organizations, and The War Effort.

Search This Website
 vehicle to find information which has been entered into the website. By clicking on this box, users can search the website to find information on a particular subject.

 

How do you see the website used in the future?

We see the future of the website in three ways.

Culturally, Diz feels we owe it to our children to let them know what their grandparents have done, so that they can learn from their experiences and perhaps live better lives as a result.

Educationally, our hope would be that teachers throughout the Chippewa Valley will use the website

Historically, depending on interest and financial support, it is our belief that this could become an online museum that will continue to archive, and make available, World War II artifacts now housed in basements and attics throughout the Chippewa Valley. 

Ideally, everyone with a scrapbook, with memoirs, with letters, with souvenirs, and with stories to tell would be able to record them for this generation and beyond.

 

Why don't you just tell us about how you became involved with the project?

Between 1941 and 1945, Henry and Elizabeth Perry of Eau Claire clipped any and all articles about World War II from the Leader and Telegram newspapers and pasted them into scrapbooks.   Their son Donald was in the U.S. Maritime Service and their son Henry was in Lieutenant General George S. Patton's Third Army. We think it was cool that they clipped articles about all boys and girls from the Chippewa Valley, not just their own boys.

Eventually, the scrapbooks were passed to their daughter, Joyce, and upon seeing the scrapbooks, a friend and World War II veteran, Marshall McQuillan, thought that another World War II veteran, Diz Kronenberg, might be interested in seeing them.

Almost immediately, Diz thought that the scrapbooks should be preserved or perhaps reproduced; made into a book. He laboriously xeroxed both sides of each page; then he cut the xeroxed articles up and filed them alphabetically by last names of individual veterans—making separate folders [i.e. last names beginning with BAs, BEs, BIs, BOs, BUs, BRs]

After Diz had reproduced, dissected, and alphabetized the scrapbook contents, he tried to find a means to have the scrapbook reassembled into a readable book. He planned to present the veterans in alphabetical order and to tell each veteran's story chronologically based on available newspaper clippings.

According to Diz, he searched vainly for someone (anyone) who could help him with what he knew would be a massive project. After two years of searching, he packed up the clippings and stored them in his basement where they remained for another 6 or 7 years. So, while I was at his home, setting him up with a computer, he mentioned the book he would like to write.  The project just "found" us. Diz invested an unbelievable amount of time and effort in this project. His vision is what directs us yet. We think it's funny, then, when Diz jokes that he feels like a quarterback who can neither run nor pass but is skilled at handing off. 

Upon seeing those folders of clippings, both Julie and I agreed that this information had to be preserved. Almost immediately, however, the discussion left the confines of a book and evolved into a web site. With a web site, we knew that the information could be accessed easily by anyone, anywhere and that information could be added to the project. It could be a living, breathing museum. 

Getting a readable text from old newspaper clippings would mean retyping the entire contents of the scrapbooks. All photos and larger articles were scanned into the computer; then edited because each ink spot and wrinkle on the clipping was reproduced as a letter or punctuation mark. We determined that it was faster to type shorter articles than to scan them. Typing the articles in by hand allowed us to make the information searchable.

So, since November we've been scanning, typing, editing, and verifying information. Of course, if you want all the details, you can check our website glossary for "The rest of the story."