A story in this issue is about generations learning from each other. It is a story that starts out in a familiar way. A teen is searching for a service project suitable to meet the final requirements of his Eagle Scout award. A parent’s friend has an idea. The scout is not certain it will work at first, but takes it on. The project involved interviewing WWII veterans, some now into their 80s, about their war time experiences. The project yielded a set of memories now saved for future generations in the archives of the Library of Congress.

The men of the 307th Bombardment Group, barely out of their teens, flew warplanes over the South Pacific Ocean in the 1940s, with minimal training and few safeguards by today’s standards. These men faced their own mortality and that of their comrades daily.

Their experiences are similar in some ways — and very different in others to what young men and women are facing now in Iraq and Afghanistan. One stark difference is the role of the media in recording the daily existence, experience and horror of war. For veterans of the era before Vietnam, such scrutiny of the war experience was limited.

The very existence of Veterans Oral History project, begun by an act of Congress in 2000, indicates that the memories and the first-hand experiences of soldiers, is as important as books and photographs.

Many cultures revere their elders, and take great pains to learn the stories of the past. Stories inform us about our culture, our future, and ourselves. Memories of all kinds are important, whether they are about flying bombers over the skies of Europe, immigrating from another country to a strange new land, or memories of a childhood before technology.

So kudos to Eagle Scout Derek Poppe, Greg Babinski and others who carried out this project and who represent us all in honoring veterans and the past.