Student documentary preserves stories of Roanoke Valley veterans

For Owen Collander ’23, history is rooted in people’s stories — not just the monumental, headline-grabbing events, but the little moments and personal memories that truly make up a life. 

“I really want to collect as many of those stories as possible and bring them to light in ways that are accessible and interesting for the public," said Collander, a history major with a concentration in public history. “I’ve always related to history a lot because I could see the stories in it.” 

That drive inspired a months-long project that Collander embarked on to record the stories of Roanoke Valley veterans and package them — not in a written report, but in a documentary that he will debut for the public later this month. 

The effort, which Collander proposed for his Honors Distinction Project, took him into the community, where he worked with local veterans' groups and ultimately sat down for in-depth interviews with six veterans from across the region. 

His film, “The Untold Stories of Roanoke Valley Veterans,” shares the experiences of those service members, covering not only their time in uniform but the lives they built afterward in the community. 

“The entire goal of the project was to give some voice to our local veterans, and a better understanding of their experiences and perspectives,” said Collander, adding the full run of interview footage, which totals more than six hours, will be archived for future use by researchers and historians.  

“I want people to be able to look back at it,” he explained, “to contribute that to the historical narrative for future generations and provide some answers as to who people were, what their lives were like and what their stories were.” 

The accounts shared in the movie run the gamut from what it was like serving as part of a military firefighting crew stationed in Korea during the Vietnam War to what it was like being a woman in the military in the 1990s. 

“It was definitely surprising some of the stories that I got to hear. People really opened up in the span of an hour-long interview,” Collander said. “There are so many stories out there. That’s something I wanted to shed light on. We might not be close to a military base here, but we still have a large veteran presence, and their experiences should be discussed and understood.”

Creating a documentary required Collander to draw on a host of different skill sets and put all his training from Roanoke College into real-world action, said Samantha Rosenthal, a professor and coordinator of the public history concentration. 

"Owen's project is truly an exemplar of interdisciplinary student research,” she said. “To produce this film, he combined his studies of oral history theory and ethics, video editing and production, and broad-based skills from the public history concentration to pull off a large-scale project from ideation to execution.”  

“Owen's oral history interviews importantly help to document the voices of local veterans, telling a complex story of these individuals' relationships to place, to service and to each other,” Rosenthal added. “I am excited for the community to get the chance soon to view Owen's finished work."  

Collander, who aims to go into a field like museum education that allows him to bring history to the public, said working on the documentary helped him hone his skills as a storyteller. With each new interview, he grew more adept at crafting questions and drawing out answers. He navigated the technical challenges of planning and editing a film that will run more than an hour long in its final iteration. 

“I think it also, just in general, really helped prepare me to tackle big projects,” he said. “This is something I've been working on since last spring. It’s taken a lot of time and commitment and hard work. But, you know, before this I never imagined that one day I would be able to make a full-fledged documentary and get the community involved with it." 

“This is something I’m passionate about,” he added. “History is something that people can struggle with because they don’t find it accessible or easy to understand. But a lot of times, history is just stories — the same kind of personal stories that people might enjoy in a book or a movie. That’s always stuck with me. I want to help make history interesting for people.” 

“The Untold Stories of Roanoke Valley Veterans” will be shown at a free, public viewing scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 30 at the Grandin Theatre, 1310 Grandin Road SW, in Roanoke. 

Collander thanked American Legion Post 3 in Salem and VFW Post 1264 in Roanoke for their assistance with the documentary as well as the many individual community members who spoke with him. He was also supported in the project by a three-member faculty committee that included Rosenthal, History Department Chair Robert Willingham and Director of Student Activities Joe Boucher.