DISPATCHES

Twenty years ago Lifelong Ballston Spa resident Robert Graf related his experiences in the South Pacific during World War II, including his combat experiences on Ro-Namur, Iwo Jima, Saipan and Tinian in  his memoirs Easy Company- My Life with the U. S. Marine Corps during World War Two (1986).   In June 2001 Mr .Graf’s  grandson, Ballston Spa student Jason Baird presented me a copy of the original manuscript. This became  the foundation for the Ballston Veterans Project www.bscsd.org/teachers/veterans , a website honoring local veterans which debuted in 2002.

On July 24, 1989  Mr. Graf  commented in a local newspaper  about this motivation for publishing the manuscript “I wish to preserve the little person’s view of the war…to get my feelings  down – my fright, my adventures, my emotions, my joys. I wanted to tell it like it was.”    Powered by Web 2.0 technology Ballston students began reading and recoding chapters from Mr. Graf’s memoirs on Veterans Day, 2006. As of December 15th our team has recorded 100 pages of the 345 page manuscript. We hope to have the entire 67 chapter manuscript complete by Memorial Day, 2009