Special Projects

Just minutes north of Milwaukee lies Bayside, Wisconsin, a town of just under 4,000. Right off Santa Monica Boulevard stands a long-winding road, called Manor Circle. To the average person, it’s a normal street with older-looking one-story ranch homes full of knick knacks and trinkets. Albert Beder, an 87-year-old man, lives there with his wife. […]

When Phil Freund was eight he had hope ripped away from him while sitting in the harbor of Havana, Cuba. He escaped the terrifying regime that was Nazi Germany. He thought he was saved. He was with 908 innocent people attempting to save themselves and their families to try and start a new life in […]

After taking on a new identity, Tauba Biterman was able to escape the wrath of Nazi Germany through her willingness to work, her quick wit, and faith in God and the good nature of others, saying, “Everything that I did, I was nuts! The almighty was with me, He wrote my life. He told me […]

Edith Schafer once described her living quarters growing up during the Holocaust in a room she cannot even describe as an apartment to a young group visiting her home. She blocked off her living room to about the size of her area rug. She laid down a few pillows and blankets, brought in one chair […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]