The Task of Archiving

By Sally Scherer

“Archivists plan for the future,” she said, emphasizing that documenting and acquiring what is important today provides valuable information for the future.

As an example, in 2014, when Jewell, Holmes, Donovan and Keeneland Halls were torn down, Bryan and a team of archivists and historic preservation faculty documented the buildings with photographs and collect historically significant items such as plaques and doorknobs.

Memorial Coliseum’s modernization required Bryan’s special skills because of the many memorial plaques throughout the building. In addition to the display of the names of the WWII war dead, there were Bronze Stars (often called Gold Stars) that included the names of 340 WWII war dead who were affiliated with the university but were not necessarily native Kentuckians.

Among them are students, faculty and staff who died in the war including 25 student-athletes from baseball, basketball, boxing, fencing, football, golf, swimming and diving, tennis, and track and field, according to UK Athletics.

“Being a part of this project was an opportunity to be more accurate, to do more work on saving these names and finding out about their stories.,” said Bryan.

Using a copy of the original architectural diagram of Memorial Coliseum, Bryan was able to document the various memorial locations throughout the building. After photographing each location, the construction team removed each item. The stars were placed into drywall panels for transportation to the archives for temporary storage.

The panels were wrapped and permanently stored. Crystal Heis, digital imaging specialist for UK Libraries Special Collections Research Center, used her expertise to digitize the extremely large and heavy panels. These digital images are available online at the Special Collections digital library, explore.uky.edu.

The transcribed names of all the Kentucky fallen as well as the photographs and biographies of the World War II and Korea Bronze Star UK fallen are available at kentuckyveterans.nunncenter.net. There are excerpts from oral history interviews with Kentucky World War II veterans there, too.

Bryan received a 2024-2025 UK CURATE Research Support Program grant to fund Matthew Mitchem, a political science and public policy double major undergraduate, to work on developing Memorializing Kentuckians at War at kentuckyveterans.nunncenter.net.

There is no original list of names used by panel creator University of Kentucky Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering John Sherman Horine. It took three years for a team of Special Collections Research Center employees to transcribe, edit, check and recheck all the names. All documents and name lists are stored in the university archives.

Display cases featuring photographs and artifacts memorializing Kentuckians who served in World War II and telling the story of Historic Memorial Coliseum have been installed inside the front doors of Memorial Coliseum on the Avenue of Champions. A dynamic interactive display allows visitors to search or browse by name or by county for any Kentuckian who died in conflicts from World War II through 2001. Oral history excerpts from Kentuckians who fought in World War II are part of the interactive display. ■