[Music]
[Applause]
on November 3rd 1917 during the First
World War at around 3:00 in the morning
in the trenches outside of Artois France
corporal James Bethel Gresham came out
of his bunker after news of a German
raid he was immediately confronted by a
soldier and said don’t shoot I’m an
American and the German soldier replied
it’s Americans I’m looking for and fired
a bullet directly between his eyes this
story is like thousands of other World
War 1 deaths but what makes it
particularly interesting is that on that
night outside of Artois France
James Bethel Gresham became one of the
first three American battle casualties
of the war and by many accounts was the
very first if you’re from here and you
know some local history you might
recognise Gretchen’s name he’s in
Evansville native his body came home in
1921 20,000 people attended his memorial
service and just to put that in
perspective about 16,000 people attend
the average indiana pacers game his name
was written in the death records in gold
ink the first one ever written that way
incredible right so I was looking at
some old newspaper articles about
Gresham and this piece caught my eye
it’s from 1922 the Indianapolis Star I
know that you can’t read it from there
but what it says is that a memorial
digression is under way a project is in
the works and that he’s going to be
temporarily buried at Locust Hill a
local cemetery this is his grave today
at Locust Hill still it’s a
government-issued headstone you wouldn’t
notice it if you weren’t looking for it
and even up until 1926 his grave was
marked by this a small mason jar with a
note in it and this wasn’t bad reporting
by the Indy star this wasn’t a one-time
promise that went awry I’m gonna show
you some headlines from local Evansville
papers from the 20s and 30s
this one’s from August 21st 1924 the
Evansville courier Gresham Memorial is
to be a national one campaign for 1.5
million dollars will be made
this one’s from August 25th 1924 the
Evansville Press memorial for first
soldier to fall in Evansville e’en on
way to reality this one’s from the
Evansville courier again November 26
1936 Plaza Shrine proposed for Gresham
so what happened over and over again
some kind of commemorative forum is
promised and yet we still fail to see
any kind of end result now I want to
shift gears briefly and talk about how
we as a society remember things our
public memory the foundation of work on
this concept is by John Bodnar it’s
called remaking America and I highly
recommend it especially if you’re from
Indiana because he uses Indianapolis as
sort of his case study and Bodnar says
that memory is this fluid volatile thing
not a concrete set of facts about the
past and he theorizes that the way we as
a society remember things actually has a
whole lot to do with what’s going on in
the present memory for Bodnar function
in a variety of ways it could be used to
push a political agenda used to shape
the discourse around a certain event
basically shifting and changing memory
or even just highlighting certain points
over others could produce real effects
in society so what I found out about
Gresham was incredible to me for two
reasons first his memory only became an
afterthought when something else
important was happening in the present
and second these things that were
happening were some of the most
important events in the city’s history
in 1922 a year after his body comes home
mayor Benjamin bossy tragically dies at
the age of 47 now if you’re from
Evansville you’ve almost surely heard of
bossy bossy high school bossy field and
the truth is that he was probably one of
our city’s most influential mayors he
was slated to run for governor he was a
landslide winner and basically every
election a public works guru and he was
the head of Memorial or Gresham’s
Memorial Committee now I would argue
that it was more the shock of losing the
mayor than the actual loss of leadership
on the project that led to Gresham’s
memory to be kind of pushed to the
backburner but it’s still not an
inconsequential thing and even this the
loss of bossy wasn’t enough to totally
kill Gresham’s momentum through the mid
to late 1920s we see more proposals in
1929 the Great Depression hits again
tragedy in the present taking priority
over our memory of the past 1936 as we
saw earlier there was a proposal to put
him at dress Plaza right on the front
and 1937 the Ohio River floods causing
seventeen million dollars worth of
damage that’s in 1937 dollars one third
of the city’s homes are destroyed and
the proposed site progressionist
memorial is flooded by the 1940s
Evansville is an integral part of the
industrial war effort and in the midst
of an even bigger second world war the
idea to commemorate this hear of the
first had become an afterthought the
title of my talk is saving chord
progression public memory then and now
mostly because I love puns and my titles
but also because I think that
understanding how we shaped our past
eighty and ninety years ago and how we
shape our past today is incredibly
important so the questions that I want
to ask you are why do we remember the
things that we do and what do we forget
maybe we forget Gresham maybe we just
remembered different things but the
point that I want to make is that it
wasn’t the past that affected his memory
it wasn’t what he did how long he served
how he died it was the present almost
exclusively the present the events that
a society experiences in the present can
quickly take priority over its memories
of the
and once again these aren’t our
individual memories they’re our
collective memories our public memory we
as a community as a city as a nation as
a state have the ability to remember and
forget things based on what we choose to
talk about I think a great way to figure
out what people we’re talking about 80
or 90 years ago is newspapers today it’s
probably social media for the first time
in our history we have an incredibly
extensive digital archive of everything
we’re talking about at any given moment
but think about how quickly we can
forget a news story can be gone in less
than an hour we have no idea of knowing
what will stick in the public mind and
what will be lost even things that may
seem important can be quickly replaced
by other big events but that’s also the
beautiful thing about memory is that it
is volatile that it is fluid sometimes
all it takes is a reminder to help
people remember what they’ve forgotten
so if you’re holding on to something if
you remember something that you think
that other people have forgotten say it
tweet it post it share it bring it back
into the public discourse talk about it
and refuse to be silent because that’s
how memory works it’s a collection of
what we’re talking about of what we say
and that’s why I’m here today to bring
the memory of corporal Gresham back into
the public discourse and to encourage
each and every one of you to find your
own lost piece of history remembering
things like Gresham is important because
they add value to our culture they
deepen our understanding of the past
and they serve as a symbol that there
may still be hope to recover what we’ve
lost I hope that this time we can save
chord progression thank you
[Applause] [Music]
[Applause]
on November 3rd 1917 during the First
World War at around 3:00 in the morning
in the trenches outside of Artois France
corporal James Bethel Gresham came out
of his bunker after news of a German
raid he was immediately confronted by a
soldier and said don’t shoot I’m an
American and the German soldier replied
it’s Americans I’m looking for and fired
a bullet directly between his eyes this
story is like thousands of other World
War 1 deaths but what makes it
particularly interesting is that on that
night outside of Artois France
James Bethel Gresham became one of the
first three American battle casualties
of the war and by many accounts was the
very first if you’re from here and you
know some local history you might
recognise Gretchen’s name he’s in
Evansville native his body came home in
1921 20,000 people attended his memorial
service and just to put that in
perspective about 16,000 people attend
the average indiana pacers game his name
was written in the death records in gold
ink the first one ever written that way
incredible right so I was looking at
some old newspaper articles about
Gresham and this piece caught my eye
it’s from 1922 the Indianapolis Star I
know that you can’t read it from there
but what it says is that a memorial
digression is under way a project is in
the works and that he’s going to be
temporarily buried at Locust Hill a
local cemetery this is his grave today
at Locust Hill still it’s a
government-issued headstone you wouldn’t
notice it if you weren’t looking for it
and even up until 1926 his grave was
marked by this a small mason jar with a
note in it and this wasn’t bad reporting
by the Indy star this wasn’t a one-time
promise that went awry I’m gonna show
you some headlines from local Evansville
papers from the 20s and 30s
this one’s from August 21st 1924 the
Evansville courier Gresham Memorial is
to be a national one campaign for 1.5
million dollars will be made
this one’s from August 25th 1924 the
Evansville Press memorial for first
soldier to fall in Evansville e’en on
way to reality this one’s from the
Evansville courier again November 26
1936 Plaza Shrine proposed for Gresham
so what happened over and over again
some kind of commemorative forum is
promised and yet we still fail to see
any kind of end result now I want to
shift gears briefly and talk about how
we as a society remember things our
public memory the foundation of work on
this concept is by John Bodnar it’s
called remaking America and I highly
recommend it especially if you’re from
Indiana because he uses Indianapolis as
sort of his case study and Bodnar says
that memory is this fluid volatile thing
not a concrete set of facts about the
past and he theorizes that the way we as
a society remember things actually has a
whole lot to do with what’s going on in
the present memory for Bodnar function
in a variety of ways it could be used to
push a political agenda used to shape
the discourse around a certain event
basically shifting and changing memory
or even just highlighting certain points
over others could produce real effects
in society so what I found out about
Gresham was incredible to me for two
reasons first his memory only became an
afterthought when something else
important was happening in the present
and second these things that were
happening were some of the most
important events in the city’s history
in 1922 a year after his body comes home
mayor Benjamin bossy tragically dies at
the age of 47 now if you’re from
Evansville you’ve almost surely heard of
bossy bossy high school bossy field and
the truth is that he was probably one of
our city’s most influential mayors he
was slated to run for governor he was a
landslide winner and basically every
election a public works guru and he was
the head of Memorial or Gresham’s
Memorial Committee now I would argue
that it was more the shock of losing the
mayor than the actual loss of leadership
on the project that led to Gresham’s
memory to be kind of pushed to the
backburner but it’s still not an
inconsequential thing and even this the
loss of bossy wasn’t enough to totally
kill Gresham’s momentum through the mid
to late 1920s we see more proposals in
1929 the Great Depression hits again
tragedy in the present taking priority
over our memory of the past 1936 as we
saw earlier there was a proposal to put
him at dress Plaza right on the front
and 1937 the Ohio River floods causing
seventeen million dollars worth of
damage that’s in 1937 dollars one third
of the city’s homes are destroyed and
the proposed site progressionist
memorial is flooded by the 1940s
Evansville is an integral part of the
industrial war effort and in the midst
of an even bigger second world war the
idea to commemorate this hear of the
first had become an afterthought the
title of my talk is saving chord
progression public memory then and now
mostly because I love puns and my titles
but also because I think that
understanding how we shaped our past
eighty and ninety years ago and how we
shape our past today is incredibly
important so the questions that I want
to ask you are why do we remember the
things that we do and what do we forget
maybe we forget Gresham maybe we just
remembered different things but the
point that I want to make is that it
wasn’t the past that affected his memory
it wasn’t what he did how long he served
how he died it was the present almost
exclusively the present the events that
a society experiences in the present can
quickly take priority over its memories
of the
and once again these aren’t our
individual memories they’re our
collective memories our public memory we
as a community as a city as a nation as
a state have the ability to remember and
forget things based on what we choose to
talk about I think a great way to figure
out what people we’re talking about 80
or 90 years ago is newspapers today it’s
probably social media for the first time
in our history we have an incredibly
extensive digital archive of everything
we’re talking about at any given moment
but think about how quickly we can
forget a news story can be gone in less
than an hour we have no idea of knowing
what will stick in the public mind and
what will be lost even things that may
seem important can be quickly replaced
by other big events but that’s also the
beautiful thing about memory is that it
is volatile that it is fluid sometimes
all it takes is a reminder to help
people remember what they’ve forgotten
so if you’re holding on to something if
you remember something that you think
that other people have forgotten say it
tweet it post it share it bring it back
into the public discourse talk about it
and refuse to be silent because that’s
how memory works it’s a collection of
what we’re talking about of what we say
and that’s why I’m here today to bring
the memory of corporal Gresham back into
the public discourse and to encourage
each and every one of you to find your
own lost piece of history remembering
things like Gresham is important because
they add value to our culture they
deepen our understanding of the past
and they serve as a symbol that there
may still be hope to recover what we’ve
lost I hope that this time we can save
chord progression thank you
[Applause] [Music]
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