JACKSONVILLE, N.C. (WITN) – Congressman Greg Murphy hosted his fifth Veterans History Project event Monday at Coastal Carolina Community College.
Sponsored by the Library of Congress, the event aims to make stories of former military members more accessible.
Tonya Mial, who retired from the United States Air Force in 2016 after just over 20 years of service, attended with a specific purpose.
“I wanted to highlight and promote female veterans, and I wanted an opportunity to share with other people our perspective,” Mial said.
Mial said women often fly under the radar as veterans but said sometimes that’s by design.
“A lot of the military organizations are male-heavy, and so you get there and just feel uncomfortable because it’s a lot of men and often older people. So, young people, like myself, try to encourage other female veterans to get out there,” she said.
The Veterans History Project works to collect and preserve the firsthand service stories of U.S. military veterans for future generations. Owen Rogers, a Veterans History Project liaison specialist, said they follow a certain interview process.
“We ask that they speak for at least 30 minutes on the scope of their experience in the military — and also early childhood experiences, what it was like when they grew up, whether they had any family in the military, and what their idea of military service was like before doing it themselves,” Rogers said.
Dozens of veterans, including Mial, RSVP’d to speak with an active-duty military member at the event.
The Veterans History Project was established by Congress in 2000. Since then, they have collected more than 120,000 stories from veterans.
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