Rotary Club of
Catalina (Tucson)

The Catalina Rotary Club Veterans Project

Storming the beaches in the Philippines; flying B29 bombing missions over Tokyo – preserving these and other wartime memories is the goal of a new initiative launched by the Catalina Rotary Club. The goal of Catalina Rotary Club Veterans Project is to record, on video, the military and Rotary service stories of club members. Copies of the interviews will be posted on a special Web site to be created at a later date. Veterans will receive copies of their interviews. The interviews will also be submitted to the Veterans History Project, run by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

The first stage of the Catalina Rotary Club’s initiative is a pilot project focusing on the club’s WWII veterans.

The Catalina Rotary Club Veterans Project is being funded initially by donations from Catalina Club members. The club also hopes to attract additional funding through sponsorships and grants.
The project was conceived by Catalina Rotary Club member Irv Mindes, who saw the need to honor military veterans and inform future generations by preserving veteran reminiscences on video. He approached fellow Rotarian and video biographer Steve Pender with the idea and together they proposed the project to the club. After raising some initial seed money, they assembled a production team consisting of Steve Pender, (director, interviewer, editor); Victor Lim (videography); Halina Pender (make up); Irv Mindes (still photography). Project co-chairs Mindes and Pender hope to complete the balance of the WWII veteran interviews in 2010, and then move on to later eras.

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