Footnote’s Virtual Vietnam Veterans Memorial – a near, full-size, digital reproduction – is a finalist for the We Media Game Changers Award. The project was first covered by CNN when it launched last spring.  Since then it has been visited by thousands, many of whom have added hundreds of photos and stories directly to the inscribed names.

Please vote and add your comment if you think The Wall is an example of a new way to tell stories together.

It’s amazing what a plane can go through and still keep flying.

This morning I was looking through some photos on the site and came into a section of photos taken in England of planes that had been damaged on missions, but still returned to base.

Here are a couple of examples:

Then I came across this one:

I did a little research and found a Missing Air Crew Report for this plane (one member of the crew was killed) and then found Footnote Pages, created from the Social Security Death Index, for the pilot, Lawrence DeLancey and the navigator, Ray Ledoux. I added a few web links and some stories about this amazing event to their pages.

Here’s the first image in the section of battle damaged planes in England. You can browse through the collection using the filmstrip at the bottom to look at other images.

You can view all the World War II Airforce images for free.

The other day, Roger Bell, President of Footnote told me about one of his friends who died at age eleven.

Tonight I remembered his story and thought about my own friend, David Burgess, who was killed along with his mother in an auto accident when he and I were five.

My memories of his last two hours of life haven’t dimmed much in the intervening years.

His hand waving out of the car window as they drove away…   I can still see his hand waving…

He would be dead in just a few more minutes.

I found the old newspaper clippings that I’d cut from the Salt Lake Tribune the day after the accident and used them in a Footnote page about David’s last day on earth.

The story from my perspective would have gone to the grave with me until Roger’s comments triggered  memories of my friend, David Burgess ……..  and now, thanks to Footnote, the story is recorded for others.  Click here to read it.

I hope his siblings find it one day.

How many memories, photos and old newspaper clippings do you have stored away that need to be recorded and shared before it is too late?

Jot them down.  Put them on Footnote pages and also in a binder that you donate to the family history department in a library.

Someone, sometime, will be extremely appreciative of your thoughtfulness.

Gifts of this nature are worth more than gold.  If you’ve ever been the recipient of one of these “gifts”, you know that it is true.