Richard Frederick enlisted in the U.S. Navy on his 17th birthday. He served in the Southwest Pacific during World War II.
TOM SANDERS / WWW.TOMSANDERSPHOTO.COM
In a small room at the Belmont Village retirement home in Buckhead, photographer Tom Sanders adjusts the lighting to match the height of one of the residents, Richard Frederick, dressed in a navy peacoat.
“When’s the last time you had that jacket on?” Sanders asks.
“Oh that was 1944,” Frederick answers with a laugh.
Frederick is a veteran of the second World War. He’s getting his photo taken as part of a portrait series, titled “American Heroes,” organized by Belmont Village Senior Living.
Edward Mervich joined the U.S. Army in 1944 and was sent to Iwo Jima, Japan. “I was there for six months to help clean out the tunnels of the final Japanese soldiers,” he says. TOM SANDERS / WWW.TOMSANDERSPHOTO.COM
The series aims to document the faces and stories of veterans at the company’s retirement communities around the country. As part of the project, photo shoots were held at two Belmont Village locations in the metro Atlanta area, one in Buckhead, which WABE attended, and another in Johns Creek.
Many of the World War II veterans photographed were just 17 or 18 years old when they enlisted near the end of the war. Now, in their late eighties or nineties, they’ve become America’s most senior veterans.
“We are losing history very quickly. It is fleeting – these men and women’s stories,” says Sanders, who was commissioned by Belmont Village for the photo project. He’s been creating portraits of veterans for a decade now and has photographed veterans for Belmont Village before. In 2010, he published many of those portraits in his book, “The Last Good War: Faces and Voices of World War II.”
Howard Fox joined the U.S. Navy in 1943. “It was an exciting time that I will never forget,” he says. TOM SANDERS / WWW.TOMSANDERSPHOTO.COM
In his photos, Sanders tries to capture the veterans’ individual stories by focusing on the emotions in their face and by including artifacts from their past.
“I always have the veterans try and wear or hold an object from the war,” Sanders says, “or I try to incorporate imagery from their experience in the military into the images as well.”
These relics of the war, like an old canteen or military ID, create nostalgia for the viewer. And they can also trigger memories in the person being photographed.
Sanders says earlier that day he photographed a woman, now suffering from dementia, in the hat she once wore as a nurse.
Clarence “Ed” Neely served in the U.S. Army Air Force from 1943 to 1946. TOM SANDERS / WWW.TOMSANDERSPHOTO.COM
“It was kind of crooked. She right away was able to put the hat on straight and wear the hat like she did when she was 18, 19 years old,” Sanders says.
The portraits Sanders produces at these photo shoots are very personal and often powerful, just like the stories of the people in them. During the Buckhead photo shoot, veterans shared their accounts of war with family members and a Belmont Village representative Amy Self.
Eli Jacobs enlisted at age 17 and served as a combat engineer with the infantry in France, Belgium and Germany. He says he saw his share of firefights but it was the scene when they landed on the beaches of Normandy, shortly after D-Day, that’s stuck with him all these years.
Eli Jacobs enlisted in the Army in 1943 and served as a combat engineer. He followed the infantry through France, Belgium and eventually Germany. CREDIT TOM SANDERS / WWW.TOMSANDERSPHOTO.COM
“We saw the body bags lined up on the beach,” Jacobs says. “That was the worst thing because I thought to myself, ‘why am I here, why in the hell did I volunteer.’”
In his portrait, Jacobs wears a hat recognizing the purple heart he ended up earning for his service.
Bill Clinton joined the Air Force when he was 18 and flew 35 combat missions through Germany. He recalls performing an emergency landing in a cornfield after his plane was shot up.
On the ground, though, he and his fellow pilot received a surprisingly warm welcome.
“[Our landing] was really in Belgium,” Clinton says. “People were really nice to us. We went into town and bought a few little articles for our girlfriends.”
Clinton’s portrait shows him standing among his former crew and a military plane.
Bill Clinton flew 35 combat missions over Germany. CREDIT TOM SANDERS / WWW.TOMSANDERSPHOTO.COM
Richard Frederick, who wore his navy peacoat for the photoshoot, joined the Navy on his 17th birthday in hope of helping the men, including his older brother, who were already serving. He shares one fond memory during his two and a half years of service.
When stationed in New Guinea he was able to take a couple hours off and look up his brother, who was also serving on the island.
“So it was a really nice moment,” Frederick says. “And of course they were having their problems because there was a Japanese plane that would bomb them almost every night just to keep them from sleeping.”
On this day the veterans talked pretty openly about the war, but that’s not something many did when they first got home all those years ago.
“They came home, they went back to school, they went to work and they went on with their lives and they just put it behind them” says Amy Self, who interviewed many of the veterans.
CREDIT CHARLES W. JONES / WABE
Some never did share their experiences. So, 70 years later in these photo shoots, they’re telling stories about their years in the war for the first time.
Self says that it’s an opportunity for the veterans’ kids to learn more about them and also for the veterans to get to know each other.
“One of the things that we’ve seen is it creates a camaraderie between the veterans themselves,” Self says. “A lot of them know that each other was in the service but they don’t exactly know what they did and we’ve seen a lot of bonds form.”
Soon everyone will be able to read these veterans’ stories and see their portraits. The Johns Creek and Buckhead retirement homes will put them on display in a permanent gallery – starting with openings on Aug. 4 and 5, respectively.
