Who doesn’t love a good mystery?
Some call it research, but I prefer to think of it as a cold-case
investigation, at least on my part. I’m talking about all that goes into
crafting a new historical program.
A year ago, Ellen Munds,
executive director of Storytelling Arts of Indiana, contacted me about going to
war. She wondered if I’d be interested in developing a program set in World War
1, about some Hoosiers who participated in some capacity in the Great War, the
war to end all wars. SAI and the Indiana Historical Society would co-sponsor
the commission.
I told her I would love to do it.
She gave me five names from which
to choose, or I could include all of them. I know of storytellers who can tell five or
six stories in a half hour. I can’t tell five or six jokes that quickly, so I
knew I’d have to cut the list.
One stipulation was that a
portion of the research was to be conducted at the Indiana History Center’s William
H. Smith Memorial Library. Not a problem. For all of my historical programs, that
was always the starting point.
The prospective list included three
soldiers, one nurse, and one pro-active mother. After looking through the
folders of the five candidates, I finally shortened it to three, settling on Col.
Robert H. Tyndall, a well-seasoned warrior who later was elected mayor of
Indianapolis; Ruth Wright Coppedge, a licensed RN and Red Cross volunteer who
joined a cadre of medical professionals to staff a base hospital; and Alice
Moore French, the mother who wanted to make sure those serving in the armed
forces were well-fed.
The Smith library offers patrons
the opportunity to hold in their clean, lotion-free hands primary sources—letters,
diaries, journals, and notes—for close examination. When I was working on my
Civil War program, I held a letter written by Gov. Oliver Morton to President
Abraham Lincoln. Seeing that there was writing on the back, I flipped it over.
President Lincoln had responded with a note! That was a thrilling moment.
Sometimes there’s a problem with
original documents, however. Take Col. Tyndall’s correspondence, for example.
His folders are full of letters, primarily to his wife, Dean. Unfortunately,
his script was small, he had a habit of dividing longer words, and the ink had faded
as the paper had yellowed over the century. Most of the letters were illegible.
Those to his children, however, were fairly clear, the writing slightly larger.
Using them to see how he formed certain letters, I was able to decipher a few more
passages in the letters to Dean.
Ruth Wright didn’t keep a war
diary. When she was in her 80s, she granted an interview to the Rochester Sentinel, her hometown
newspaper. It was brief and sketchy, but it gave some insight into her life as
a war nurse. Among her materials at Smith library was a book, A History of Base Hospital #32. I found
the text for the book online, also. She is listed in it throughout, so I was
able to track her assignments and transfers. How I wished I had some more
personal insights of her, though. Writers and storytellers love salient details.
That’s what makes a story pop alive.
Serendipity is a wonderful thing!
Once I’d selected and photocopied documents I needed from the Smith library, I
went searching online. What was the life of a WW1 Red Cross nurse like at a
base hospital?
Bingo!
I stumbled across the diary of
Maude Essig, director of nurses at Elkhart General Hospital. Essig and Wright
had grown up within 60 miles of one another. Further, her experience matched
Wright’s. They were billeted in the same places, had the same duties, and knew
the same people. Essig went into much more detail, however. They would have
known one another well. Ruth began to breathe, to have a pulse. She came alive
to me!
Alice Moore French was easy. She
wrote lots of letters, ones I could actually read, and she wrote a complete
history of the Indiana War Mothers, the organization she founded at the request
of Herbert Hoover. And someone had transcribed it!
A storyteller always gathers much
more material than she’ll use. In preparing Over
There and Back Again, I certainly did that. I studied the constructing of
the trenches. (Did you know there were three different ways to go about it?) I
learned more than I ever wanted to know about the gases used in the shells. I
watched old newsreels. And, with the help of Google Street View, I toured
Contrexeville, where Base Hospital #32 was located, and I hiked the Vosges
Mountains. The cutting is painful, though. I had to amputate one episode from
French’s story that I really wanted to include. Ouch!
The United States entered the war
100 years ago, but this is not a program about the war. Rather, Over There and Back Again shows the effect
of the war on three patriotic Hoosiers.
And their effect on the war.
