Old Newspapers

Box of newspapers from WWII

I was given a box of newspapers dating from WWII, which I tried donating to a local museum for preservation purposes. However, they told  me that newsprint was never conserved because the low quality of the paper made it unsuitable. I have held on to them ever since, unable to bear discarding part of history, especially someone's history, someone who held on to it for so long. We have been asked to write a story on some artifacts we treasure for my Digital Storytelling course and I did the project using One True Media, which can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLaPmPrFFmI&feature=channel_video_title

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Here is the story I imagined for my box of newspapers.

The cottage sits serenely on a short, quiet street that is part of a small historical section of South Miami inhabited by other cottages and bordered by a winding canal. Its owner had passed away and her children settled the estate quickly, selling off the property and taking everything with them. Everything that is, but a box of frail, yellow newspapers neatly tucked into a box in the attic of the old house.

The newspapers, which the previous owner of the cottage had lovingly kept all these years form a chronicle with the front page of “The Miami Herald” or the now defunct “Miami News” of the milestones of WW II.

December 8, 1941, Japan Wars on US: Planes Bomb

January 2, 1943, War Time Orange Bowl features Miami’s beloved Orange Bowl Stadium, unceremoniously torn down in 2008, paying homage to our soldiers. An article tucked neatly away inside declares, Miamians Toe Behavior Line on New Year’s Eve – it was always a raucous place.

December 6, 1943, the famous picture of FDR, Churchill and Stalin at the Tehran Conference.

 July 26, 1943, Mussolini Ousted and the reporter speculated where Mussolini would go into hiding and if the Germans would indeed try and rescue him.

December 6, 1944, Invasion Launched with D-Day photos amazingly similar to scenes from Saving Private Ryan

April 15, 1945, Death of President Franklyn Delano Roosevelt

I could see her poring over every inch of information she could gleam from the reports of a world that had surely gone mad. Not knowing the outcome of the war she saved the papers to analyze them in the aftermath. It wouldn’t do to think too much about it while it was happening;  just go to work on the war effort as women were doing for the first time in droves, stay informed and keep going. That way the fear that her husband wouldn’t return and that everything that was good and decent in the world might be wiped out by a madman couldn’t paralyze her.

May 8^th, 1945, VE Decree Due Today reads the final headline. It was the formal surrender of the Nazis and the end of her long ordeal. Her husband did return and the world righted itself as the ordinary pursuits of everyday life took their rightful preeminence. There was not a single paper that she held on to so tenaciously after that date.

The museum won’t take her newspapers because newsprint can’t be stabilized and wasn’t meant to last anyhow. I try not to handle them too much and to keep them as dry as possible in a humid climate such as ours. Even though the papers crumble a little more each day,  I hold on to them, lest all they represented to her be disregarded and thrown out.

One True Media was  easy to use, mixing my images with the recording of my voice telling the story, with a short video clip and then posting it to YouTube. The only challenging aspect was that I used my Apple I-phone to do all of the above and my PC uses another format so I solved it by borrowing a friend's  Apple laptop and submitting it to One True Media from there.