Special Projects

The birth of a child for many can be a special moment. Being surrounded by loved ones in a hospital and gazing into the eyes of a newborn baby for the first time are moments that aren’t easily forgotten. When Edie Pump was brought into this world on May 18, 1942, her parents were on […]

Susie Fono is 7-years-old. She cowers in front of a wood stove in a small room crammed with people. Bullets slam against the outer walls of the building, and bombs rattle in the distance. The year is 1945, and the Soviet Red Army is battling back the German troops that had occupied her family’s home […]

For Willie Bedford’s five siblings, his face was a distant memory. They lost their brother 45 years ago in Vietnam. In the decades since, one-by-one, their photos of him were also lost, especially after the family matriarch died. It had been about 20 years since any of them had seen his picture. Until Memorial Day […]

There were 64 names. Of supposedly unfindable photos of men from Wisconsin who’d died in Vietnam more than 40 years ago. Almost all of the men on the list were from Milwaukee, the state’s urban center. But had these men really vanished without a public trace, other than their names? A photo shows something more dimensional than letters on granite, […]

Dear Maggie, I’m happy to help you record Don’s story. Do him justice. I am a 67-year-old former CAP Marine looking at the images you sent, a face I haven’t seen since Feb of 1969, and I’m crying like a little kid. If you and I took a trip back to that village in Vietnam we […]

About two weeks after a UW-Milwaukee journalism class began searching for a photo of Robert Wisch, who died in Vietnam, a phone call came from a Florida area code. It was Kathleen Henkelman. His sister. “Bobby was my second oldest brother,” she said. Did she have any photos of Robert that she could perhaps scan […]

“I’ll write to you again soon. I’m a friend until YOU die.” These two lines will forever stick in Jerry Richardson’s memory as the closing lines to the last letter he received from his best friend Lee Chester Adams, of Milwaukee, while Adams was serving in Vietnam. Richardson didn’t hear from Adams for a while […]

Growing up as a Native American on the Stockbridge-Munsee reservation in the 1950’s wasn’t easy. There weren’t many jobs available to the residents, and many families consisted of a single mother and many children who did what they could to help out. Wayne Malone is no stranger to these hardships. Malone grew up in a […]

Christmas Day is associated with beautifully decorated trees hovering above colorfully-wrapped gifts, families gathered around a dinner table, the scent of pine and gingerbread and air filled with chatter. The Thresher family received on their Christmas Eve of 1967 news from two Marines on their Milwaukee doorstep that their son and brother had stepped on […]

For many, brotherhood is a bond that flows deeper than blood and stands stronger than bone. For Johnny “Doc” Webb, Jim Gridley, and the members of the first American ground unit that crossed into Cambodia at 08:45 on May 1, 1970, that brotherhood would be forged in a white-hot moment under the weight of a […]

The year is 1965, and America has been involved in the war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam for 10 years. President Johnson just authorized an increase in U.S. military presence and by fall of 1965 over 150,000 soldiers had descended to Vietnam to fight in the war. During that year, 1,928 soldiers died in […]

David Radonski had plenty of memories with Butchie, Kenneth Radonski’s childhood nickname. The brothers shared a room together growing up, worked together at their father’s gas station on 16th and Oklahoma in Milwaukee and received their Confirmation together. David describes his memories with Kenneth as “clean fun.” “We would go crabbing and biking together,” David […]