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Eyes Wide Open Across Pennsylvania

The Fall 2006 Tour

Muhlenberg College
Allentown, PA, October 8, 2006

The Muhlenberg College exhibit saw a wide range of reactions.  One of the most powerful interactions occurred between three recently returned Iraq veterans and a ROTC student.  As the exhibit opened, three three vets immediately expressed their sincere gratitude for the display, which they felt honored the soldiers.  Soon after, the local ROTC expressed the opposite response, saying he felt “a peace demonstration is disrespectful to soldiers.”  Our volunteer spent some time listening to his views before he departed.  When the three vets heard about the incident, they offered to talk to the ROTC student as well.  The exhibit’s ability to bring viewers with different perspectives together is often astonishing.

Some stories about the

•   The boots of a young woman local to Muhlenberg, 21-year-old Jennifer Hartman, were recently added to the exhibit. Hartman’s immediate family, uncle, aunt and grandmother came to bring mementos for Jennifer’s boots.  The grandmother brought a little cross on a chain, which she had given to Jennifer; her uncle brought a little model four-wheel ATV.  Jennifer loved to go four-wheeling.  The exhibit gave these bereft relatives a chance to talk about their beloved young woman: she had been the apple of her father’s eye.  She signed up at 17, they said, and her parents would never have agreed to her joining if the military had not assured them all that she would never go to Iraq.  They remain very angry, especially since the army has yet to give them a straightforward explanation about the circumstances of her death.

•   One volunteer, taking us to a pair of boots, said she had been the soldiers den mother when he was a boy.  He was always in and out of her home as a kid.  He had also suffered from epilepsy, and his seizures would make him go blank for a moment or two.  She wondered if his seizures contributed to the circumstances of his death. Most of all, however, she wondered how the military could have recruited him when he had such a serious neurological condition.

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