For the next year, Evansville’s historic contribution to the war effort will be documented in a new and interactive way. The goal is to bring local WWII history to life, for anyone with access to a computer.
Evansville Museum of Arts, History & Science, The Evansville Wartime Museum and the LST 325 Memorial are collaborating on this project, to create an interactive online tour of the various places around town important to WWII history.
They’ve been awarded a national $10,000 grant from the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, made possible as Indiana’s World War II Heritage City.
Chris Donahue with the L-S-T 325 said the project will bring the city’s history to anyone, anywhere.
“At any hour of the day, you're sitting at your computer, you can be sitting on the other side of the world and take this tour digitally,” Donahue said. “Beforehand, you had 50 people on a bus, maybe taking a tour of Evansville.”
Savanah Summerfield, a history graduate of the University of Evansville and a graduate student in WWII Studies at Arizona State University will work with these groups to identify and document the sites.
Donahue said they’ll be documenting spots not everyone is familiar with.
“Some of these places don't exist anymore,” he said. “The USO Evansville canteen was known nationally by soldiers and sailors that came through here — by the Hoosier hospitality they got (at) the LST bar on Franklin, which is something else now … but there'll be pictures of these. There'll be a story.”
The former locations where ships, warplanes and ammunition were built will no doubt be documented as well.
The full name for the project is “World War II Evansville IN – Eighty Years Later: A Look at Wartime Locations.”
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