The experiences of three local World War II veterans were brought to life on Nov. 5 at the World War II Roundtable meeting. The oral histories of James T. Stolfus, Dwight L. Spencer and Donald C. Coldsmith were read by Loren Pennington, emeritus professor of history, Christopher Lovett, professor of history and Max McCoy, assistant professor of English, modern languages and journalism, respectively.
Jennifer Baldwin/ The Bulletin
“We expected to have all three men on the program, but we ended up with none of them on because Don Coldsmith died, and both Spencer and Stolfus are not in good enough physical shape to be on the program,” Lovett said.
All three men were fifth class technicians in the war, which Pennington said meant that they were in-effect corporals. Stolfus was a local school superintendent, Spencer was a professor of biology at Emporia State and Coldsmith was a local doctor. The men were a part of an oral history project that was meant to include interviews of all living WWII veterans in America, and 52 veterans that were connected with Lyon County were interviewed as a part of the project.
The meeting was the roundtable’s second of the year, the first was a presentation of the film “Triumph of the Will”, on Oct. 22. The film was in conjunction with this semester’s theme of Adolf Hitler and the rise of Nazism.
Sophomore history major Britten Kuckleman said the video was interesting because it showed a different view of Hitler than we as Americans are used to.
“We obviously have a bias towards him and we’re seeing something that actually portrayed Hitler as a savior, so it was a really cool view point,” Kuckleman said.
Senior history major Tiffany Humiston said she has been to about four of the roundtable meetings. She said she likes them because most of the meetings have a tie to Kansas and she thinks it is important to get the stories of the veterans.
“It’s a huge part of not only U.S. history, but world history,” Humiston said. “I mean it encompassed the entire world, hence the name. I just think it’s something that especially our generation, I think we need to learn about it and appreciate what the old generations did for us.”
Pennington said the WWII Roundtable has been going on for six years. There were originally four meetings a year, but now they have cut back to two. He said the main goals of the meetings are to talk about the war in macrocosm and microcosm.
“To talk about the war in macrocosm, we usually bring in some outside speaker for that general idea,” Pennington said. “To speak about it in microcosm, we’ve done more and more to look at the war through the eyes of the ordinary soldier or the ordinary serviceman.”
Humiston said she thinks it is important for people to come to the roundtable meetings even if they think it’s going to be boring because they can learn something from it.
“It’s only an hour and a half or two hours out of your life and you get to come out and hear their story,” Humiston said. “They went through so much and I think it’s important that somebody hears their story.”
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