University Library News Release
Date: October 5, 2005
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Jeanette Smith, NMSU Library, (505) 646-7492, jcsmith@lib.nmsu.edu
Aggie G.I. Letters to be Read
In commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II, the New Mexico State University Library will present a reading of letters from NMSU students who served in the Pacific theatre in the 1940s as soldiers and nurses.
The program will be held on Friday, October 28, at 2 p.m. on the fourth floor of Branson Library during NMSU’s Homecoming Weekend. The reading is free and open to the public. The letters will be read by NMSU students and faculty members, and a local ensemble will play ‘40s music.
The title of the presentation “The Whole Damned World: Aggies in the Pacific, 1941-1945,” is based on a poem by Jim Carson published in 1944 in the college literary magazine The Rio Grande Writer. Like many of his fellow Aggies, Carson sat on a beachhead underneath palm trees “somewhere in the Pacific” and longed for the mesas and mountains of New Mexico.
The letters, preserved in the NMSU Library’s University Archives, were written to Daniel B. “Dad” Jett, Dean of the School of Engineering. Jett carried on a personal correspondence with hundred of former students during World War II. These letters provide indelible insights into the lives of young men and women involved in cataclysmic world events. The letters reveal a nostalgia for the college, infused with hope for returning to the school when the war ended.
The program is sponsored by the NMSU Library’s Archives & Special Collections Department. For more information, please contact Martha Andrews at (505) 646-5028 or the Archives staff at (505) 646-3839.
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