Honoring Veterans through Portraits

Who among us remembers the Forgotten War, as the Korean War is sometimes called? My high-school students might know of it from a history quiz or television special, but the significance of the war or why it was called “forgotten” is not relevant to their daily lives. It’s certainly not showing up in their stories on social media. For our fall portrait project, I decided to raise this topic with my advanced art and AP students.

We talked about studentsʼ understanding of the Korean War, and I asked them if they were up to the challenge of learning about the experiences of our local Korean War veterans and honoring them with their portrait skills. Students were excited by this challenge.

Reaching Local Veterans
We first designed a flyer to solicit a response from veterans in our town who might be interested. We posted the flyer in supermarkets, the VFW, the AMVETS hall, the local senior center, and local nursing homes, asking people to call or email me with their contact information if they wanted to participate. I also contacted some of my acquaintances in town who remembered the war to ask if they knew anyone who served. And I reached out to the local historical society to see if they would be interested in displaying the final works.

The Forgotten War
Many of those who served in the Korean War didn’t see any battle because they were on ships in the Pacific waiting for involvement. Others who served would prefer not to be reminded of this time in their lives because they saw things in battle that they don’t want to remember. Veterans of World War II are called the “Greatest Generation”—their experience is celebrated and revered in our shared history. The Korean War was actually dubbed a conflict and it just ended; we didn’t exactly “win” anything.

Photos and Portraits
After gathering our list of veterans, we determined who among the volunteers could visit our school for students to take their photo. I made the trip to photograph the veterans who were unable to visit us. We also collected photographs from their time in the service to scan as portrait sources.

As we collected these source photos, some of the veterans came into class to talk about their experiences in their assigned or chosen branch. Many of the veterans were drafted out of our own high school and sent into combat—a thought that resonated with the teenagers.

Students were each assigned a veteran, choosing between their contemporary and scanned service photos. Students spent the month of October working on their portraits. The advanced art students used grids to create portraits in graphite, and the AP students worked in acrylic on canvas.

Exhibition
The local historical society planned to show the works for Veterans Day, and found someone in town to donate matching frames for many of the works. The show was installed in the historical societyʼs great hall for the month of November, and it served as a backdrop for their speaker series on the war. We had a well-attended reception for students and the veterans, and everyone involved was able to celebrate the project together.

Reflection
In the weeks following the show, we received a number of kind notes from the men and women who participated in the project. They wrote to thank us for giving attention to their experience, and for helping them to feel that their service was not forgotten.
This project did not take up much of my classroom materials, and could have been executed simply with paper and pencil. We displayed the works for a period of time at the high-school gallery, along with informational boards put together by my colleagues in the history department.

The project did involve some extra work on my part in the collecting of images, but I enjoyed the challenge of finding participants and getting to know them and their stories. The historical society was a fantastic partner in this project. The veterans appreciated our efforts, and my students will never forget the experience.