Discover history with Worland war babies project

On Friday, Oct. 13 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., the Washakie Museum and Cultural Center will be introducing its latest oral history collection, the War Babies of Worland.

Headed by Cathy Healy, the Worland High School class of 1960 has been working on retelling and putting together their stories from their time growing up in Worland during World War II and the following years. At this launch, Healy said that people will get to experience Worland the way the class of 1960 did, as they will have 50s music, a 1954 Oldsmobile and a retelling of select stories.

According to Healy, the Worland High School Class of 1960 had been planning their 60th high school reunion for 2020, but they were stopped in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the pandemic continued into 2021 and further delayed their reunion, the class began to talk with each other online over Zoom. She said after they made it through the process of getting everyone on Zoom and they started sharing their old stories, they realized, “how unusual our period of time in Worland was […] and that nobody knew the stories that we knew.” Healy said that the group chatted about many topics when reminiscing on Worland during that time. They had shared many family stories and facts about Worland that Healy said she’d never known before they started this project.

In 2022, after the class finally had their reunion, Healy said they decided to start putting together this project. She said 19 people had signed up to be interviewed and share their experiences. Healy and her team put together interview questions, one being, “What are the sights, sounds and smells of your childhood in Worland?” They conducted the interviews through Zoom and from there, the audio and video aspects, “took a lot of cleanup,” according to Healy.

Healy said that she is grateful that her background in journalism gave her the confidence and skills to take stories from her former classmates and turn this project into the collection of oral history it is now.

However, it did not come together easily. She said that she hadn’t realized the fragility of the class, including herself. Despite Healy and her team facing many challenges throughout the process, including health problems and technical difficulties, Healy said that, “It’s a project of love […] I really think it’s so rich, what people have described. You have such a sense of time and place.”

According to Healy, this project could not have been done without the help of many others. Healy said she wanted to thank her team — Joanne Culbertson Jeffres, Joan Walseth Purcell, Laine Bailey De Freece, Peggy Steele Porter, Joyce Taylor Spence and a student at George Mason University, Nicholle Uria. Additionally, Healy said that the class of 1960 is paying for the food at the event on Oct. 13 and donated funds to pay for the oral history site.

The event will have many members from the class of 1960 there, according to Healy. She said,“Everybody local will be there, plus about 10 people from out of state,” which includes herself. Healy currently lives in Washington, D.C., which is where she has lived for much of her adult life. Throughout her career in the field of journalism, Healy traveled, worked for multiple news organizations, including National Geographic and is involved with Partners of the Americas. She said that she’s excited to get back to Worland and hopes that the community shows up to this event to learn about Worland in a new way.

The six Worland class members who participated and shared stories are Sharon Chagnon Frisbee, Peggy Steele Porter, Lowell Peterson, Loren Laird, Dennis Bower and Carol Woodhams Day.

Stories from the class members include life without antibiotics and TV, armed bank robbery, hopping freight trains, helping dig canals, painting cars and dragging main, the games children played, sports, school, working as teenagers, computers, chores, movies and more.