NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 25 number 1 - Fall 2004

GI Bill Exhibit Highlights Impact on NC State

By Anna Dahlstein, External Relations

The year 2004 has featured commemorations of some of the defining events of the twentieth century. In May 150,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., for the dedication of the World War II Memorial on the National Mall. On June 6 European and American leaders marked the sixtieth anniversary of the D-Day landings, when Allied troops turned the tide of World War II. Two weeks later, another sixtieth anniversary passed more quietly, although it marked an occasion of enormous significance for American society.

On June 22, 1944, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as "the GI Bill of Rights," which has provided approximately 21 million veterans, service members, and family members with $77 billion in benefits for education and training. The NCSU Libraries is hosting a major exhibit and symposium this fall to celebrate the GI Bill and to honor the veterans who have attended NC State.

The Libraries' Special Collections Research Center has created an exhibit documenting the local impact of one of the best-loved and most successful public policies ever adopted in the United States. Combining historical materials with testimonies of current NC State students who served in Iraq and the Mediterranean, Transforming Society: The GI Bill Experience at NC State is on display in the D. H. Hill Library from October 14 through December 22. Drawing mainly on the research center's rich collections of photographs, campus publications, student essays, letters, and other University Archives and manuscript materials, the exhibit documents how the GI Bill contributed to the growth of NC State and shaped the lives of individual students.

On November 12, the day after Veterans Day, the Libraries will welcome nationally recognized scholars, North Carolina veterans, and the general public to a symposium at the McKimmon Center beginning at 1:00 P.M. Following a keynote address by Milton Greenberg, the former provost of American University who wrote The GI Bill: The Law That Changed America, there will be a panel discussion moderated by Professor Robert Serow of the NCSU College of Education. Panelists will include Associate Professor of Political Science Suzanne Mettler of Syracuse University, who is currently working on a book entitled Civic Generation: The GI Bill in Veterans' Lives; Lt. Col. (Ret.) Sion Harrington III, the military collection archivist at the North Carolina Office of Archives and History in Raleigh; and NC State alumnus Ted J. Meyer (1948), who served in World War II.

Other alumni, students, and members of the community will have the opportunity to share their stories and perspectives in smaller breakout sessions. The symposium will conclude with remarks by former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court Burley Mitchell Jr. (Class of 1966), who is president of the Alumni Association's Board of Directors. Both Green-berg and Mitchell used GI Bill benefits for their educations, as did Harrington and Meyer.

Vice Provost and Director of Libraries Susan K. Nutter is amazed and moved by the number of people she has met over the past year who credit the GI Bill for broadening their opportunities. "So many NC State students were touched by this legislation, and not just following World War II," she noted. "Even today, the benefits represent the most generous financial aid for college provided by the federal government."

Serow and Anna Dahlstein (former NCSU Libraries Fellow) interviewed ten current and former NC State students who served in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iraq, and other arenas before completing their education. Their stories are featured in the exhibit and have become a part of the University Archives in the form of oral history recordings. They and other alumni loaned artifacts, documents, and photographs to the Libraries to help tell the story of the GI BillÑa story that is still unfolding today.

Not long after the original legislation of 1944 was passed, the student body at NC State doubled in comparison to prewar enrollment levels, and campus life changed in many ways. In the late 1940s, half of the nation's college and graduate students had served in the war effort. At NC State, that figure accounted for roughly 80 percent of the study body. The new educational demands provided a strong incentive for the North Carolina legislature to allocate funding for a dramatic expansion of NC State's resources, labs, buildings, and faculty rosters. The United States Congress later approved similar benefits for Korea- and Vietnam-era veterans. The current Montgomery GI Bill (MGIB) offers benefits not only to veterans, but also to active duty service members and members of the National Guard and reserves. Congress approved a large increase in MGIB benefits shortly after September 11, 2001.

The NCSU Libraries welcomes outside support for this exhibition project. Contributions may be made by writing a check with a designation for the GI Bill exhibit and mailing it to Friends of the Library, Campus Box 7111, Raleigh, N.C. 27695. For more information, please call Director of Development Jim Mulvey at (919) 515-3339.