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| Graduate student
completes Appalachian veteran list |
by
Leslie Rasimas
Staff Writer |
Josh Brown | Chief Photographer
Graduate student Cory
J. Stewart compiled a list of 33 names of ASU alumni who
died in armed conflict for the Office of Student Development.
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Hal
Bingham served and died in World War II after graduating from
Appalachian State University in the early 1940s.
Over sixty years later, Cory J. Stewart, a graduate student
at Appalachian, found Bingham’s signed 1941 Rhododendron
annual in the Appalachian Collection while compiling a list
for the Office of Student Development of all former university
students who died in military service.
“At first I saw [Bingham’s name] and thought it
was neat. But then I started to go through [the annual] and
it just got heavier and heavier. There were ‘Way to go
Hal,’ and ‘You’re the man, Hal,’ and one
woman signed, ‘You’re the best looking man on campus.’
Seeing all that and knowing what was in [Bingham’s] future
was eerie,” Stewart said.
Stewart graduated from Appalachian in December 2000 and received
his masters in history this past May.
At the university’s Veteran’s Day Program in 2001,
Vice Chancellor for Student Development Dr. Gregory Blimling
talked with many people in attendance that knew others that
had died in military service.
“We had never put together a list of former students
who were members of the armed service who had died in service
to their country. We thought this was something the university
should do,” Blimling said.
Blimling contacted the chairman of the department of history,
Dr. Michael Krenn, asking him for a graduate student to do
research on students and alumni that died in military service.
Krenn then contacted Stewart because of his undergraduate
degree in public history and experience researching projects
in all areas of public history.
“I don’t think I foresaw how
big of a project it would be,” Stewart said. |
From August 2002 until May 2003, Stewart worked tediously
comparing lists of casualties, university records from the
Registrar’s Office and Internet sites to complete a list
of 33 names.
They will be commemorated on a plaque outside
the B.B. Dougherty Administration Building.
“For small conflicts like Desert Storm
and the Grenada Invasion, I took the list of casualties and
compared those to the ASU’s Registrar’s Office list.
For bigger conflicts such as Vietnam and Korea, it was a lot
more trouble. The whole process was a lot of narrowing down,”
Stewart said.
Stewart’s list of names may not even
be complete, he said.
He compared lists like the Honor Roll,
a published list of names of victims from World War II, to
names in the Rhododendron.
“That’s why Vietnam and Korea
are still problematic. Not everyone appears in the annuals,”
he said. “It was the only method I had in a 10-month
period to do any narrowing down.”
“I am able to say for certain that
the 33 names I found are accurate. There may be a few more
names out there,” Stewart said,
He said he is disappointed he did not have
the time or the resources to find every possible name of a
victim from the university.
Stewart had a hard time with certain aspects
of the project because it is a sad subject for some. The research
consisted of finding the names of the deceased, which he said
was overwhelming and very depressing.
“The hardest part of this project
was getting to the research, not the research itself,”
he said. “How am I going to find these things? Where
am I going to find these things?”
During his research, Stewart talked to
people like a woman who left the university with three of
her friends and became nurses in World War II. After the war,
they returned to the university to finish their degrees.
“It’s little stories like that
I would want to dive in and find out all about,” he said.
Despite the overwhelming work involved
with the research, Stewart accomplished more than what was
asked of him.
His job was to find a list of deceased
students and alumni and he delivered the list and any information
he could find on the 33 people such as place of birth and
how they died.
Stewart presented his Veterans Project
to the Student Development committee meeting for the Board
of Trustees and the Board of Trustees meeting on June 6.
Stewart’s Veterans Project, notes
and surveys are in University Archives.
He will be teaching part-time freshman
level courses in the fall in the department of history. |
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