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Books by Eric Douglas

Thriller fiction and Non-fiction

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Veterans of the USS West Virginia

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Over the weekend, I had the honor and privilege of meeting a small group of veterans from World War II who served aboard the USS West Virginia, known as the “WeeVee”. Two of them were onboard at Pearl Harbor when the ship was bombed and sank. Others served on the battleship later in the war after it was floated, repaired and sent back to war.

The group, down to about 11 men, expects this to be their last reunion meeting. They are all getting up in age and wanted their last meeting to be in West Virginia. I’ve always been interested in history, war history and West Virginia history so when I saw the men were coming to Charleston with their families it naturally caught my attention. But there was also a closer connection.
My daughters’ great grandfather (on their mother’s side) Anthony “Tony” Sereno was on board the USS West Virginia at Pearl Harbor. He survived the attack by jumping into the sea and swimming ashore on Ford Island. His family in Richwood, West Virginia learned that he was missing in action by telegram. It wasn’t until 18 days later, on Christmas Day, that they learned Tony was alive and well. Tony was about six months short of finishing up his commitment to the Navy when Japan attacked. He ended up getting extended until after the war finally ended in 1945. As one of the only sailors who was actually from West Virginia on board the battleship at the time, Tony is also featured in a video about World War II that runs on a loop in the West Virginia Culture Center museum.
Unfortunately, Tony passed away last summer at the age of 94. My daughters got to spend quite a bit of time with Tony, though, and were very close to him. I tell them all the time how lucky they are to have known their great grandparents. When I told the girls where we were going on Saturday, they were excited. For them, it was a chance to meet with others who had done the same things as Tony and a chance to reconnect with him. We spent about 45 minutes there talking to Syl Puccio, one of the Pearl Harbor survivors. We bought a ship’s hat and the girls had Mr. Puccio sign it for them. Mr. Puccio recently received the Navy and Marine Corps commendation for his heroic actions that day and is credited with saving hundreds of lives on board. It is entirely possible Tony lived through the attack because of Mr. Puccio’s actions. Talk about life coming full circle, even if it took 71 years.

If you’re interested in learning more about the group or the battleship USS West Virginia, visit the group’s website.

In 2006, I wrote and published a short story called Pearl Harbor Christmas, based on Tony’s experiences at Pearl Harbor. It is free to download and read. The girls and I took a copy of the story that included a picture of Tony and the one above of them looking at the video loop, and presented it to the group as well.

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Everyone can create!

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A year ago, when I was planning to move back to West Virginia (after being away for nearly 14 years), I talked to my then-girlfriend about creating a program that helped regular people create their own documentaries. I had recently completed the certificate program at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke Universityand I wanted to replicate that sort of program here in West Virginia. My thinking was that we (West Virginians) don’t do a very good job telling our own stories. We usually let outsiders do it for us and then complain because they got it wrong.

 

While I lived away, I told people where I was from and more than once I had to explain: 

“No, I don’t know how to play a banjo. Deliverance was actually filmed in Georgia.”
Flash forward about six months to the opening of DigiSo at the West Virginia State University Economic Development Center on the West Side of Charleston. I wrote about it in my blog post Digital Age andWest Virginia.
A couple weeks ago, I attended the opening for the new Creators Programand last night I attended a seminar from the program. All I have to say is Danny Boyd and the rest of the crew at DigiSo have done exactly what I hoped to do. And they are doing it right.
“The Creators Program is a series of short community workshops focused on key skills and knowledge essential to “creating” for mass media and art.”
This is a chance for everyone who has thought “I want to tell a story” but didn’t know how to do it to get the tools and the support they need. And learn from the very people who do it for a living.
The Creators Program isn’t just about making films. At the program I attended last night, presented by Amy Saunders, grants administrator for the West Virginia Humanities Council, there were people working for small non-profits and looking for ways to tell a story, an author looking to publish his book about education, a couple filmmakers and a musician producing her second album, while thinking about creating a documentary about the Italian stone cutters who migrated to West Virginia. Two ladies were working to create a food pantry at their church and looking at ways to tell the story and find funding. Amy talked about what it takes to get grant money to produce projects.
It just so happens, Danny has asked me to put on a seminar next month on Self Publishing. And I have an idea that I’m working on, about documentaries, that might come around next year. In short, this is an amazing opportunity for people to get involved and learn to tell stories. The facilities at DigiSo are as good, or better, than what I used at Duke . This is definitely something to be proud of and we all need to take advantage of this program.
I can’t wait until the first person graduates with a Creators Certificate and finishes up a project with skills they learned at DigiSo. I will be there cheering. Because I know it means average people are succeeding at telling their own stories.
Upcoming seminars include:
·         Self Publishing for Writers – Eric Douglas 10/19 – 10/20
·         Entertainment/IP Law – Robert Bandy & Kevin Levine 11/2
·         Working With the Film Office – Pam Haynes (and WV Film Office staff) 12/8

You can check the schedule and register at http://wvsu.incutrack.net/calendar/calendar.cfmfor all classes. And there is a lot more in the works for next year too.

 

 

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Voices of War

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For the last six months, I’ve been working on a new documentary project. I’m calling it Voices of War. Frankly, it will be another six months before it is finished.

I’ve been collecting oral histories from West Virginia war veterans. I began this project when I learned that only 20 or so oral histories had been submitted to the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project from West Virginia. This is out of an estimated 200,000 veterans living in the Mountain State. After I launched my project, I learned that Glenville State College is gathering an archive of West Virginia veteran oral histories which might explain why there hadn’t been many submissions to the national one. After thinking about it for a couple days, I realized that there can’t be too many of these efforts and that it is vitally important to collect as many of these memories as we possibly can.

My project is not solely about collecting these oral histories to be submitted to an archive, however. I plan to use each of these interviews in a documentary. It will feature an audio documentary combining comments and thoughts from each of the veterans I’ve interviewed and a printed piece with stories taken from the interviews.

It’s been an eye-opening and extremely gratifying project. I’ve sat down in dozens of homes and just listened, prodding or directing where need-be, but mostly just listening and trying to grasp what these men and women have seen.

I’ve learned a lot about the cost of war, too. It isn’t just the infantry, but the truck drivers, the security guards and the cooks who experience it.  One veteran I spoke to, Ira Richmond, was a signalman on a landing craft in WWII in the south Pacific. He was there for MacArthur’s return to the Philippines. His ship was fired on, but never actually hit. Still, the stress must have been incredible. A shipmate of his left him a note saying “I can’t take another landing” and disappeared. The next morning, all they found were his shoes. He saw things that broke his heart as well. When they would take an island, small canoes would paddle out to their ships filled with women and children, begging for food and clothing after the long occupation.

I still have a few more interviews to collect. Specifically at this point, I’m looking for women veterans who deployed to any war zone and men and women who have served in Afghanistan. The biggest challenge I’m facing now, though, is to do this project justice. How do you tell the story of all of these men and women? That is the challenge I signed up for when I started this, and I do love a good challenge.

Time to get to work.

If you can to read other blog posts about this project and hear snippets from other veterans I’ve interviewed, follow these links.

·         Talking to Veterans


·         The Power of Monuments


·         Voices of War Update


·         Soldiers After War

If you’re interested in my previous documentary projects, check out:

The issue with Miskito Divers

The exhibit in Russia

 

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The people you meet ARE the adventure

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Lately, I’ve been feeling a little frustrated with the attitudes of people in the news, on the internet and on the street. While I wasn’t in a bad mood, I probably wasn’t in the best frame of mind when I left the house yesterday. My plan was to interview two World War II veterans for my Voices of War documentary project as I drove away from Charleston.

My first interview was with Eugene Lusk of Herndon in Wyoming County. Mr. Lusk gave me directions to his house, but I was also following the map function on my phone. And that’s where I got in trouble. Rather than taking me to Herndon Road, the phone app took me to Herndon “Heights” Road. As you can probably guess, that means I ended up following a small winding road to the top of a mountain.

If you’re not familiar with southern West Virginia, I was on a road (barely) one car wide, hemmed in by tall trees. I couldn’t see anything around me and was getting pretty frustrated. Cell signal was pretty much nonexistent as well. I realized I was going to have to attempt retrace my footsteps and find my way back down the mountain. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it to my first interview at all. This was not doing anything for my outlook.

While I was pulled off to the side trying to figure out where I’d gone wrong, a car pulled up beside me. The driver had the passenger window rolled down. I told him who I was looking for. He said “Give me a minute. I’ll show you where you need to go. You can follow me.” Just a few minutes later, I was racing back down the hill following a man who had obviously driven this road hundreds of times. While I was late for my first interview, I still made it.

Sitting on the back porch of Mr. Lusk’s home, we had a good talk about his service in the Army during World War II. He was in a Port Battalion where he loaded ships headed to the D Day invasion; then he moved across the channel right just a few hours behind the first wave of men who hit the beach to unload the equipment and food that would help Patton push across Europe. Because I was late, we finished up our talk a few minutes after noon and he invited me to eat lunch. I declined at first, but finally relented. It was good, home-cooked food, beans, cornbread, greens, sauerkraut and wieners.

Mr. Lusk’s wife is suffering from dementia, but after 65 years of marriage Mr. Lusk said they still made a good pair. He was gentle when he spoke to his wife, helping her with her food when the nurse stepped away. He talked about the family they raised together. It made me smile to watch them, and I wanted to get out my camera, but I thought, “No, this is a private moment.”

As I left, I called my second appointment to make sure it was all right for me to stop by. He told me he had plumbers in cleaning up a problem in his home, but then said to come on by because they had gone out for lunch. I thought to myself, “When I’ve had plumbing issues, the last thing I wanted to do is speak with a stranger,” but he was kind enough to let me in. And I got to speak to Ira Richmond, a veteran who served his country, in the south Pacific this time, as a signalman in the Navy. His fellow sailors, including the Captain of the ship, called him “Pluto” for the name of the town he was born in Raleigh County.

All of the anger and hate in the news bothers me. It seems like no one knows how to be civil any more. Sometimes it feels like there’s no respect for people of different faiths, cultures or beliefs. We feel like it is our sworn duty to mock others who think something even marginally different than we do. No one wants to be nice to anyone for fear of…well I’m really not sure what they’re afraid of. But these three men, and their families, helped me realize it is still possible to be nice to each other. These men were just neighborly.

As I drove home, I realized my own mood had lightened significantly. I was honored to be in the presence of these two men, and graced by a favor done by a stranger. Every adventure doesn’t start with a passport. Sometimes they happen in your backyard. I’m sure I learned as much from this adventure as I have any other I’ve been on..

Courage, on the 4th and every day

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Did you know John Adams, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, thought July 2nd would be celebrated to honor the founding of the United States? Me either.

The Second Continental Congress voted to approve the resolution of independence on July 2. The next day John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail:

“The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”

The Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence itself on July 4 and that date was included on the document. And the rest is history.

Regardless of the actual date, it took amazing courage for our founding fathers to stand up and rebel against King George and Great Britain. They were overmatched, out-gunned and had nothing to fall back on. If they had failed, I can only imagine how much worse things would have gotten for the colonists.

About the same time, Irish statesman, philosopher and member of the British Parliament Edmund Burke is supposed to have said “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” The only thing, no one can find where he actually “wrote” that anywhere. It’s possible he said it in a speech. Others believe that the quotation is a modern paraphrasing of things he was saying at the time.

While those were scary and difficult times, modern Americans have faced similar challenges. Over the last several months, I’ve been interviewing American war veterans about their experiences. I’m collecting oral histories and plan to compile the thoughts of these men (and hopefully women) into a documentary project about those who have served their country in time of war. I’ve had the honor and privilege of interviewing men who fought in every conflict the United States has been involved in over the last 70 years as part of this effort.

You can find links to those previous veterans blogs, here.

Of the interviews I’ve conducted, I don’t think I’ve talked to a soldier who: A) considered himself a hero; B) regretted his service or C) would hesitate to do it again if called upon. Even the ones who were drafted still know the pride of serving their country when they were needed.

As a nation, we faced one of the most trying times in the last 50 years with the terrorist attacks in New York and in Washington DC and our servicemen have risen to that challenge. At home, we had to pull together and support each other. We had to figure out a new normal for life.

Follow this link to the blog about visiting the 9/11 memorial in NYC.

Serving your country and standing up against evil doesn’t necessarily require holding a rifle. Many of the founding fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence didn’t actively fight in the American Revolution with a musket in their hands. They served their country in other ways; as statesmen, as publishers and leaders.

Then as now, the issue is still the same. We have the choice to stand up and take action to face evil where we see it in the world, the same way veterans of World War II did when they faced down Hitler on one front and the Japanese on the other. The same way American servicemen have fought to make a difference for the people of Afghanistan and Iraq.

A day like Independence Day (be it on July 2 or July 4) is an important time to reflect on the price of freedom. The price of standing up against evil. The saying “Freedom isn’t free” was no more true 200+ years ago than it is today.

Enjoy your family today; celebrate the Fourth of July as the peak of summer. Have a cook-out. Eat too much food and enjoy fireworks tonight. But stop to think about the people who have made the United States what it is. Say thank you to someone who has served to fight against evil in the world if you can, or whisper a prayer for them if you can’t.

Today, and every day, our flag still flies and represents everything great this country stands for.

Update: On July 4th, a reporter stopped by my in-law’s house and wanted to talk to us about celebrating the holiday, in spite of the severe storms we had just endured. You can see the story and video here. (They misspelled my name.).

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