Don Milne has lived in Utah for 35 years, but he probably knows at least as much about Utah Beach. A self-described World War II history buff, Milne has spent the last four years chronicling one story of a U.S. soldier who died in the war every day.
Of those who died in the war, 9,300 were from Tennessee, several of whom died on the U.S. Navy heavy cruiser the USS Indianapolis, which a Japanese submarine sunk 75 years ago Thursday.
Last year, after the banking job Milne had worked for several years got cut, he decided to make the hobby into a full-time project, "Stories Behind the Stars."
Within 18 months, more than 1 million readers from across the country were following the project through his blog, according to Milne. Readers were shocked when Milne said he planned to stop on September 2, the 75th anniversary of the end of the war.
"I had always planning to stop on September 20, 2020," Milne said. "I had done about 1,200 profiles already. But when people found out I was going to stop, they said 'Why?' I said, 'At one a day, I can never finish all these names in a lifetime.'"
Pretty soon, readers turned into volunteers.
With financial support from the Greatest Generation Foundation, a nonprofit that helps elderly veterans revisit the battlefields where they fought, and Ancestry.com, Milne has been able to provide the resources necessary for 400 volunteers across the United States to collaborate on the project, with the goal of completing all 400,000 profiles by 2025, the 80th anniversary of the war's end.
Two of his volunteers are from Tennessee: Susan Gould and John Slatterer.
Gould, a retired nurse who's lived in Tennessee since her husband retired from the Navy 40 years ago, said she "wasn't looking for something to do" when she came across the project in a newsletter from the New England Historical Society, of which she's a member.
By the beginning of July, just a few days after reading about "Stories Behind the Stars," Gould had reached out to Milne and started writing profiles. By the end of July, she had already completed 35, most of which were of men killed aboard the USS Indianapolis and with some connection to the state of Tennessee.
"I contacted Don through the website, wanting to post story of my cousin," Gould said, explaining that her cousin was killed in action in WWII. "Then I realized the magnitude of the whole project and how important it was. So I decided I would look into Tennessee casualties, and he told me emphasis this month was the USS Indianapolis, and I just went from there."
Gould is meticulous: "I have a few profiles that I haven’t posted yet because I want to get more information filled in. Maybe when the state archives open up," she said with a laugh.
Both Gould and Milne emphasized the importance of telling the stories of the fallen soldiers to preserve history. Many of the soldiers who died were young, Gould said, and did not have a living descendant to carry on their legacy.
"It's very important, especially for the ones without descendants," she said. "We don’t want them lost to time, because their sacrifice isn’t any less. It’s very important that the stories not be lost."
Of the 9,300 who died from Tennessee, Gould said the stories are "really neat." One of her profiles, Lieutenant Commander Kyle C. Moore from Knoxville, was a photojournalist who drowned on the USS Indianapolis. But there are a lot left to be done, she said.
Like Gould, a lot of his volunteers are retired, Milne said.
"Especially in this age of COVID, a lot of people are limited in what they can do. But anybody with a computer and internet connection and just a little bit of training, I can provide can start with just a name and in a few hours they can write that story," Milne said.
How to volunteer to tell the story of a fallen hero:
Email Don Milne at donlmilne@gmail.com or go to storiesbehindthestars.org/volunteer.
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July 29, 2020 at 05:02PM
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'Stories Behind the Stars' to tell story of every soldier who died in WWII, including 9,300 from Tennessee - Tennessean
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