Churchill Museum to host exhibit on "Greatest Generation'

This photo of ladies bidding farewell to Marines by the Semper Fidelis Club in St. Paul, Minn. is part of the Our Lives, Our Stories: America's Greatest Generation exhibit that will be coming to the Churchill Museum in June.
This photo of ladies bidding farewell to Marines by the Semper Fidelis Club in St. Paul, Minn. is part of the Our Lives, Our Stories: America's Greatest Generation exhibit that will be coming to the Churchill Museum in June.

The National Churchill Museum soon will be paying tribute to what Tom Brokaw dubbed the "Greatest Generation."

June 16 through Aug. 11, the museum will host Our Lives, Our Stories: America's Greatest Generation, a traveling exhibit put together by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

According to a press release, the exhibit "explores the life arc of the World War II generation - as told in their own words." Originally developed by the Minnesota Historical Society in Saint Paul, Minn., it was created using memories and oral histories gathered by the society.

It begins with the babies of the 1910s and 1920s "and then explores the human impact of events that marked major turning points in their lives, including the Depression, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, World War II, the rising awareness of Civil Rights and the growth of media-driven culture during the post-war boom," the release states. "While this generation's identity is clearly linked to World War II, the focus of Our Lives, Our Stories seeks to restore a wholeness to our understanding of them by allowing people to tell their stories along the longer arc of their lives."

Archivist/curator Liz Murphy said Churchill Museum officials decided to bring Our Lives, Our Stories to Fulton because, "we wanted an opportunity to tell that story."

"We tell the story a lot about Great Britain during World War II, we thought telling about our own country would be nice," Murphy said. "It's really exciting because it covers from the Great Depression basically up to today."

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