UWF premieres Vietnam Veteran oral history documentary

The UWF Department of History and Philosophy will premiere “Their Vietnam: Voices of Azalea Trace,” a documentary created through a yearlong public history oral history project, on Tuesday, Nov. 10, at the UWF Center for Fine and Performing Arts Mainstage Theatre. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is requested. A public reception begins at 6:30 p.m., followed by the premiere at 7 p.m.

The approximately 1-hour, 40-minute documentary grew out of an effort by UWF students to record the firsthand experiences of Vietnam veterans living at Pensacola’s Azalea Trace retirement community. The project had two central goals: to record and preserve the remarkable firsthand histories of local veterans for future generations and to provide UWF students with hands-on training in oral history, interviewing, transcription and other professional skills used in public history. 

“The project has been a joy to be a part of and is enriching for all involved,” said Dr. Erin Stone, chair of the UWF Department of History and Philosophy. “The students gained practical experience working as historians while also recording an important part of U.S. and Pensacola history.”

Under the guidance of UWF faculty Joyce Southard and Nathan Smith, undergraduate and graduate students conducted interviews between September and October 2025 with Azalea Trace veterans. The students gained practical experience documenting oral histories while helping preserve personal accounts that might otherwise be lost. The project also explored additional ways of sharing the histories with the public, including documentary film and publication.

Among those interviewed during the broader project were veterans with distinguished military and public-service careers, as well as veterans and spouses whose experiences illuminate the deeply personal dimensions of military service and war. The resulting oral histories are intended to preserve these firsthand accounts in UWF’s archives. Rather than presenting a single narrative of the war, the documentary preserves the veterans’ own individual accounts of service, identity and the sobering realities of war. 

“Through these interviews, students in my Vietnam War course had the opportunity to learn from the firsthand accounts of those who experienced the war,” Southard said.

The veterans’ own reasons for participating illustrate the importance of preserving these accounts. During the original interviews, Vietnam veteran Miles Davis explained that military service and war taught lessons impossible to acquire elsewhere, recalling that he “put on a lot of years” during his first year in Vietnam. Asked why he agreed to participate, Davis said he wanted younger generations who had only heard about Vietnam to understand what soldiers experienced, thought and felt. He emphasized the importance of preserving those experiences and lessons while the people who lived them are still able to tell their stories.

To learn more about the UWF Department of History and Philosophy, visit uwf.edu/history.