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Machesney Park students continue to capture local veteran stories

Yvonne Boose
Movie poster of one of the documentaries.

Many high schools across the country work year-round to highlight veteran contributions. A northern Illinois school is one of them.

In 2008, Harlem High School in Machesney Park added a new course to its curriculum – The Harlem Veteran Project. This was made possible by the Illinois Veteran Classroom Project.

Kyra Newnam is a social studies teacher at Harlem. She came on to the project when co-founder Jeremy Bois became the school’s principal. She said it started as a part of the media studies class but after that, things took off.

“So, the next year, they made it its own class,” she explained. “And then for a long time, we ran two classes, once COVID hit, I think our numbers kind of went down a bit. And then so it's one class now.”

Newnam said the students get about one year to complete their documentaries. They first start out by doing research and determining the questions to ask. They are given a bank of questions.

“Some kids feel like, they got to follow the sheet 100%. I always tell them, like, there's a list of questions. There's like a safety net,” said Nicholas Stange, the teacher who started the project with Bois.

The students produce and edit the documentaries. After that the pieces are showcased for the community. The veteran who is the film’s subject receives the finished documentary during this end-of-the-school-year gala.

Newnam said the community members who’ve showed up for past celebrations tend to come back and this has helped the project grow.

“Starting to build some of those relationships with different community organizations,” she said, “and like just exposing kids to that more, and then that kind of pulls in their families a little bit more, which pulls in like, you know, other people a little bit more.”

Stange said the project is successful but it’s time to go deeper.

“But now, I think it's the understanding ‘what does it mean, you know, when we have somebody who goes into a combat zone?’” he questioned. “The pictures aren't always you know, rosy. And sometimes I think we kind of glorify stuff too much [instead of] telling the whole story.”

The other evolution of the project is to also focus on stories that are outside of the veteran scope. Stange calls it the Harlem Documentary Project.

“We still have veteran docs being worked on but this year we also have two young ladies that wanted to take a look at social justice,” he explained. “So, they interviewed two local activists in that regard.”

One of those students is Bryana Travieso. She is a senior at the high school. She said she wasn’t sure what the class was about, but one thing caught her attention.

Nicholas Stange and Kyra Newnam
Yvonne Boose
Nicholas Stange and Kyra Newnam

“I've liked editing stuff. Like personal clips, I've done by myself,” she said. “So, knowing this opportunity to create something, I wanted to do that.”

This is her second documentary. It focuses on a civil rights activist from Mississippi.

Travieso said she's more confident this time around. She has a message for students who are not too sure about taking the course.

“You might get frustrated, but the end outcome is so rewarding,” she said. “And just to have people come up to you and talk to you and say how much just hearing what you created means to them. I think that'll just make up for everything that you were lacking before.”

A few of the films were showcased in the Beloit International Film Festival. The class is working on another project that they hope will be featured in the festival. Newnam gives a synopsis.

“Five, like, wonderful women with like, fascinating stories, all local. And just really kind of seeing their experience,” she explained. “And then seeing them kind of giving back to the community is a big part of their story too. Almost, I think all of them in some capacity, work in the community for veterans.”

Stange said veterans should continue to have their own platforms.

“We've seen World War II people 95 years old, say they still can't sleep because of something that occurred when they were 18 years old,” he said. “So that dictates the next seventy, eighty years of their life. I mean, that's what we really got to think about.”

Midway Village Museum will showcase two films created by the project: “Waging Peace,” and Travieso’s first film, “Strength in Her Voice: The Story of Lana McCants,” on Saturday, Nov. 19 at 1 p.m.

  • Yvonne Boose is a current corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project. It's a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms like WNIJ. You can learn more about Report for America at wnij.org.
Yvonne covers artistic, cultural, and spiritual expressions in the COVID-19 era. This could include how members of community cultural groups are finding creative and innovative ways to enrich their personal lives through these expressions individually and within the context of their larger communities. Boose is a recent graduate of the Illinois Media School and returns to journalism after a career in the corporate world.