WMBFNews.com | Myrtle Beach/Florence, SC | News, Weather, SportsCCU establishes new Center for Military and Veterans Studies

CCU establishes new Center for Military and Veterans Studies

CONWAY, SC - Coastal Carolina University has announced the creation of a new center that will recognize local American military veterans and preserve a record of their service.

The Center for Military and Veterans Studies at Coastal Carolina University will officially open in January on campus. The center is partnering with the U.S. Library of Congress to collect and preserve the memoirs and records of local military veterans, while encouraging public appreciation for veterans and their contributions to the nation.

Located in the University’s Foundation Center on US-501 on the University’s east campus, the new center will host interviews with veterans and accept donations of oral history, memoirs, documents and photographs – all of which will be cataloged and preserved as permanent collections of the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress.  

Through the Center for Military and Veterans Studies, the University is also establishing a veterans association for students, faculty and staff.
      
"Our veterans deserve recognition and appreciation for service to our country, and their experiences deserve to be recorded and preserved. We’re also broadening our outreach to veterans within the University family of students, faculty and staff," said David DeCenzo, university president.

Author and historian Rod Gragg has been named director of the Center for Military and Veterans Studies, which is a companion project to the University’s popular ROTC program.  An adjunct professor of history at the university, Gragg is the author of 16 books on American history, including eight on topics in military history.  A former instructor in the University of South Carolina ROTC program, Gragg was the longtime host of SCETV’s “War Memories” television program, which featured oral history by veterans of the Second World War. He was a regional director in the U.S. Department of Defense’s World War II Commemorative Committee, and his books have earned the Fletcher Pratt Award and the James I. Robertson Award for military history.

“The mission of the Veterans Center is to encourage appreciation for the veterans among us and the sacrifices so many have made on our behalf, while preserving a record of their service through memoirs, photographs and documents,” Gragg said.  “Partnering with the Library of Congress means that our local veterans’ experiences can become part of the Library’s permanent holdings, and be available to historians, researchers and the general public.”

The Center for Military and Veterans Studies will follow established Library of Congress standards, Gragg said, as it works with local veterans to record interviews, and collect memoirs, documents and photographs relating to veterans’ military service.  

Donated materials and recorded oral histories will be forwarded to the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.  There, a collection will be established in the name of each veteran in the permanent holdings of the Library of Congress.  Eventually, each collection will be available for study by scholars, genealogists, researchers and the general public.  

Families of deceased veterans may donate military memoirs, records and photographs that belonged to their relatives or ancestors, and collections will be established at the Library of Congress in the names of the deceased veterans.  

Interviews will be conducted at the Veterans Center office at Coastal Carolina University, and will be scheduled by appointment, beginning in January.
            
Veterans who wish to donate documents, photographs and memoirs, or be interviewed Veterans History Project, may contact the new CCU center at (843) 234-3431.

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