|
Documentary Examines Government Trips
Taking Mothers to WWI Cemeteries
As a child, William Prince used to creep into his grandmother’s hushed, lavender-scented bedroom, and stare at a two-inch gold star, engraved with his Uncle Percy Stevens’ name and mounted on a background of red and white silk.
His grandmother treasured the gold star, given to her as an emblem of her sacrifice after her son was killed in World War I. But like other mothers whose sons were buried in Europe, Laura Stevens had not had the comfort of seeing Percy’s final resting place. Then in the 1930s, the government organized and paid for pilgrimages to European gravesites for Stevens and 6,000 other mothers and wives.
Prince, of Bend, Ore., relates his grandmother’s story in Gold Star Mothers: Pilgrimage of
Remembrance, a documentary offered by PBS Plus in May,
2004. Call your local PBS station for the air date and time in
your area.
Produced by WILL-TV’s Alison Davis Wood, the one-hour program intertwines the history of the pilgrimages and war with the social and political history of motherhood, looking at how the government used propaganda to convince mothers to support the war, how mothers
wielded political power to get approval for the trips, and how the segregation of the African American women on the pilgrimages contributed to the decision of many black voters to leave the Republican Party.
The program also features the story of Fred Ziegler and his mother, Louise, of Durand, Ill. Experts on World War I and the pilgrimages help put the mothers’ stories in a larger context. The Cincinnati Public Library’s John W. Graham, author of a forthcoming book about the pilgrimages, "As No One but a Mother Could Do," was co-producer of the program.
Wood, who won an Emmy Award for her previous documentary about Illinois architect Walter Burley Griffin, said that mothers were at the height of their influence in American society during World War I and its aftermath. When a young man was killed in battle, people automatically thought of the grief of his mother, she said. “Today, we’d more often think of the spouse, but back then, it was the mother,” she said. Gen. John J. Pershing urged his soldiers in the field to write to their mothers on a new holiday, Mother’s Day, she said.
The trips were life-changing experiences for the mothers, many of whom had never traveled outside their hometown or state. “If you think about it, you're 50 or 60 years old, and you are asked to go 4-, 5-, 6,000 miles away with a complete group of strangers,” said Marvin Fletcher, of Ohio University, one of the featured experts. “You're on a ship with nobody you know. The only thing that you know is that everything is going to be taken care of, but even so, this could have been a terrifying experience.” The government worked to make the trips a pleasant experience, he said. Even the African-American mothers, who traveled on smaller, second-class vessels, enjoyed the relative freedom of Europe. “You could be yourself,” said another featured expert, Constance Potter of the National Archives. “You were not viewed as a black in Paris. You could be you.”
Although the Army expected the mothers to break down at the gravesites, in fact they showed strength. Out of thousands of pilgrims, only one mother needed medical attention at the cemetery, said Davis. Every woman was given a wreath to lay at her soldier’s grave, and a photographer took her picture. “I think the mothers came out of the experience visiting the cemeteries feeling that the sacrifice was worth it, that this crusade was something that was necessary and significant,” said Fletcher.
The documentary also looks at today’s American Gold Star Mothers, many of whom lost a son or daughter in Vietnam. Some continue the tradition of making pilgrimages to the battlefield in order to bring closure to their loss, and all hope a day will come when there will no longer be a need for a Gold Star Mothers organization.
Featured experts are historians G. Kurt Piehler, University of Tennessee; Marvin Fletcher, Ohio University; Barbara Ransby, University of Illinois at Chicago; Rebecca J. Plant, University of California, San Diego; Lisa M. Budreau, Oxford University; Edward M. Coffman, author of “The War to End All Wars,” and archivists Mitchell Yockelson and Constance Potter of the National Archives.
Gold Star Mothers: Pilgrimage of Remembrance was made possible, in part, by a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Illinois General Assembly.
###
Contact:
Alison Davis Wood, producer
(217) 333-1070
Mary Barrineau, publicity
(217) 333-1070
###
Back to WILL Press Room
|
|
