Veterans History Project: How to Participate and Submit a Relative's Interview

Your grandmother served, she has finally said yes, and there are forty minutes of her on your phone. The obvious next thought is whether this belongs anywhere other than your own hard drive. It can. At the Library of Congress sits the Veterans History Project, and an interview recorded by a relative at a kitchen table is exactly what it was built to collect.

The whole process is explained below. There is no deadline, so do it properly rather than quickly.

What you need in front of you

• A veteran who has agreed, knowing that a national library will hold the recording permanently.
• Somewhere quiet, something to record on, and ninety minutes blocked out, breaks included.
• The project's current forms, downloaded from the Library itself rather than from a copy somebody uploaded elsewhere.
• Do not upload it, forward it or share it anywhere until the release form carries a signature.
• Assume the paperwork has changed since this page was written. It periodically does.

The whole thing in six lines

Confirm eligibility. Ask properly, with nothing running. Take today's field kit and today's forms from the Library's own site. Record. Get the release signed and the log filled in. Duplicate every file and page for yourselves, then post the originals exactly as the kit says, and expect the wait to run into months.

Who the Library will accept

The Library's guidance on taking part sets a wide net: anybody who served in any branch, at any rank, at any point since the First World War qualifies, with no requirement to have seen combat. Its field kit allows any individual or organisation to do the interviewing, including relatives and students from the age of fifteen.

What the project is not is equally worth knowing. It collects first-hand accounts. It has nothing to do with service records, discharge papers, benefits or medical files, and it cannot help you obtain any of those.

There is a reason this has become more pressing than it reads. Figures published by the Census Bureau for Veterans Day 2025 show that of 15.7 million American veterans in 2024, those who served in the Second World War now account for 0.4%, while 29.1% of all veterans are aged seventy-five or over. Whole cohorts of first-hand memory are closing. If your relative is in that group and willing, this year rather than next.

The conversation before the conversation

Have an unrecorded talk first, and treat it as the most important step on this page. Say what the project is, that the audio joins a permanent national collection, and that researchers they will never meet may listen in fifty years. Then make refusing genuinely easy.

Some veterans will say the family can have it and the Library cannot. That answer is complete in itself, and a family-only recording is still worth making. If the hesitation is about talking at all rather than about the archive, asking someone who would rather not discuss any of it is the better starting point.

Paperwork, and where to get the current version

Download the field kit and forms from the Library's site, work through its paperwork, get the releases signed, and watch the instructional video it links. Remento's walkthrough of the process follows the same order and mentions that a cover letter comes with the kit for the box.

Older toolkit text republished by PBS alongside a Bill Moyers programme names three documents families used to fill in: the releases, a form for biographical details, and a log of the recording. Those names may well have shifted, so treat that list as a rough expectation and fill in whatever the Library issues today.

If the site is unhelpful, the project answers directly. Remento's guide gives the toll-free line as 888-371-5848 and the email as vohp@loc.gov.

Recording day

Note the essentials before anything starts recording: the full name as spelled on paper, the date of birth, the branch, the highest rank reached, and which conflict or period. Choose five questions rather than fifty. Open somewhere easy and nowhere near the uniform, then work forwards through time. Our ten-minute Veterans Day plan and the longer set in the longer list for a parent or grandparent who served both work as a base.

Use the best recorder and microphone you can lay hands on, which for most families means a phone in a quiet room with the heating off. Plan ninety minutes, take breaks, and continue another day if the energy goes. A diary, a stack of letters and some prints laid out on the table prompt better than any list of questions. Our notes on recording family history on a phone cover consent, settings and file names.

Copy everything, then post the originals, then wait

This is the step families get wrong, and it is irreversible. Remento's guide states that submitted materials "will NOT be returned", whether the project accepts them or not, and that originals are what you send. So duplicate the audio, the forms, the photographs and the letters before anything leaves the house.

Post the box as the field kit directs, with the cover letter, using a trackable service. Remento lists the address as the Veterans History Project, Library of Congress, 101 Independence Avenue SE, Washington DC 20540-4615, and says material can also be hand delivered to Room LJ-G51 of the Jefferson Building on weekdays between half past nine and half past three, if you call or email before turning up.

Then it goes quiet. The review runs six to eight months according to Remento. Read that as a guide and not a promise. Hand your relative their own copy at once, and tell them the day Washington confirms the box landed.

One route most families never hear about

You do not have to do this alone, and the help is often local and free. Many congressional offices run their own Veterans History Project programmes, pairing students with veterans in the same county.

The page describing Congressman Jared Huffman's programme is a useful example of how those work. Veterans ring the district office with their branch and dates of service, students ring with the name of the veteran they want to interview, and the office matches anybody who has no veteran of their own. Parents, educators and other veterans can come along as coaches to make a nervous student more comfortable.

Its interview structure is worth stealing whether or not you use a congressional office. The first meeting is not recorded at all. It exists to get acquainted, complete the biographical form and have the release signed. Only the second meeting is the interview. That page also notes four copies being made: one for the veteran, one for the interviewer, one archived locally, and one sent to Washington. Local archiving is the part a family acting alone forgets, and a county library or historical society will often take a copy.

Submit it, but keep the better copy at home

Families treat acceptance by the Library as the finish line, and that instinct quietly costs them the thing they actually wanted. The national copy is a catalogue record. It will be accurate, findable by researchers, and almost entirely unused by your own relatives, because nobody browses a national collection to remember their grandmother.

So do both, and put the care into the home copy. Send the Library what it asks for. Then build the version your family will actually open: the audio with the photographs she was holding, the names of the people she mentioned, the places spelled correctly, and your own notes on what she said while the recorder was off. That second artefact is the one a grandchild will play, and no archive will ever make it for you.

A different answer applies if your relative's service is historically unusual, or if the family is scattered and nobody will take custody, the national submission may genuinely be the safer long-term home. In that case post it early and keep a modest copy. One well-kept copy somewhere beats two half-finished ones.

Three situations that change the plan

• The veteran has already died. First-hand material they left behind is collected too: correspondence, a written memoir, a journal, submitted by the people who loved them. Confirm against today's rules what counts.
• They will not be recorded. Original photographs, correspondence and documents are collected in their own right. A written account with no audio is still a submission.
• Something difficult surfaces. Switch the recorder off and do not leave. Three ways reach the Veterans Crisis Line: 988 then the 1 key, a text to 838255, or chat on its website, which confirms that no VA enrolment is required and that relatives of a veteran may use it as well. The VA's notice on the 988 number lists the same options. Beyond the United States, local emergency services.

Where the family's own copy belongs

Washington keeps its copy indefinitely. Yours needs a home too, one where the prints, the years and the names sit beside the audio instead of three folders away. Glow exists for that, inside a closed family space: the genuine recording as it was made, captioned by the family, nothing fabricated. A well-labelled folder duplicated across two drives works just as well. The only real test is whether it outlives the phone it was recorded on.

Questions families ask before they post the box

Does a relative count as a qualified interviewer?

Yes. The field kit allows any individual or organisation, relatives included, and students from fifteen upwards. You do not need credentials, training or an institution behind you.

Will anyone tell us whether it was accepted?

Expect to wait several months, and ask rather than assume. Because nothing comes back either way, your own copy is the only guaranteed version, which is the argument for making it first.

Is any of this official advice?

No. Forms, limits and addresses change, and this page is a map rather than the rules. Take the Library's own pages, and the phone number and email above, as the final word.