On January 18th, 2022 Rome Historical Society (RHS) announced a new video series called The Griffiss Experience. Throughout 2022 RHS will release four videos on YouTube, featuring members of the community and their memories of Griffiss Air Force Base.
Since January 2021 RHS has been a Partner for the Museum Association of New York’s (MANY) Building Capacity, Creating Sustainability, Growing Accessibility initiative. In this two-year program, participating museums are working to identify and virtually present programs from stories found in their collections that reveal diversity in their communities.
Griffiss Air Force Base operated for more than 50 years, saw some of the first African Americans and women in the armed forces, and brought diverse groups of people to the Rome, NY area. RHS has been collecting the fading memories of Griffiss Air Force Base in recorded video interviews.
MANY has provided RHS with training, hardware, and software to develop this video series and create a platform for community members to share their stories. The interviews, paired with RHS collection photos and documents, have been curated into a series of short videos about how Griffiss Air Force Base continues to impact the community.
RHS staff intends to continue recording and collecting interviews for many years to come. If you are interested in sharing your story or learning more, call Miranda at (315) 336-5870. You can watch, like, and share the videos on Facebook or Youtube.
Photo of Griffiss Air Force Base courtesy Rome Historical Society.
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