A place where the forgotten live on

As Americans, we tend to forget about World War I. It’s not surprising, if you think about it. Nearly a century has passed since it happened. All its participants are dead. In schools, it’s often only covered in enough detail to provide context for its successor, World War II.

But there’s one place where the Great War is anything but forgotten. A place where artifacts, photographs, exhibits, and passionate historians bring the story of the war and its impact to life. A place where a flame burns high above a city in perpetual remembrance of the 9 million combatants and 7 million civilians that lost their lives as a result of the war.

I visited the Liberty Memorial National World War One Museum last week. My family’s lived in Kansas City for almost five years, so it’s not the first time I’ve been there. But after spending a semester working on the Lest We Forget project, the experience took on an entirely new significance.

For the first time, I realized how much I have in common with the men who fought in that war. As a college student, it’s hard to imagine the world descending into violent turmoil, and even harder to imagine shipping off to a foreign land to kill or be killed. It’s one of those things that you tend to think won’t happen to you, like getting in a car accident or being in line at the bank when someone sticks it up. But when something like that happens close to home, to someone you know or feel as though you know, it makes it real.

That’s what Liberty Memorial does so well — it tells the story of the war using the words and experiences of the people involved. It’s one thing to see a faded black-and-white picture of a bunch of guys standing in line outside a row of tents, and a whole other to read a letter home from one of those guys telling his girlfriend how much the processing camp reminds him of his college dormitory.

When we unveil the Lest We Forget website this Thursday, we aim to tell the story of Memorial Stadium through the eyes of the community and university it was built in, the people who worked to build it, and the men who it was built to honor. The next few days will involve a great deal of work and some sleepless nights for my team and I, but if we succeed in this venture, it will be well worth it. We hope you’re excited to learn more about this K-State treasure.