This year marks the end of the First World War. In its time called the Great War because of the death and devastation it cause on such a large scale, the conflict took the lives of over nine million people around the world. The war began in 1914 and lasted four long years. With its great ports and proximity to the sea lanes to Europe and elsewhere, the Greater New York City area was integral to the war effort even before America joined the fight because so much materiel left from the docks of Brooklyn, Manhattan, Hoboken, New Jersey and elsewhere. Greater New York only became that much more important after the United States entered the conflict in April 1917.
In Summer 2016 the Ursula C. Schwerin Library applied for a grant co-sponsored by The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, The Library of America, and The National Endowment for the Humanities to mark the centennial of World War One. The library also reached out to City Tech’s Office of Veterans Support Services as a partner to join the dialogue.
Library faculty spent much of 2017 producing a twenty-two minute documentary called New Yorkers in Uniform: From World War One to Today.
The film discusses the life and times of Thomas Michael Tobin, a Great War veteran born in Yonkers, just north of Manhattan, in the 1880s. Orphaned by the age of fourteen, Tobin was a grade school dropout who successfully made his way in the world before putting on a uniform and going off to France in 1917. After the war he picked up with his business and political affairs and raised his five sons, together with his wife, in Yonkers. For the film we also interviewed two contemporary veterans, both of them current City Tech students. Fostering conversation between the families of World War One doughboys (as American troops in that war were called) with contemporary veterans was one of the purposes of the grant. City Tech vets were also a good fit because of the college’s history dating back to 1946 in the aftermath of the Second World War. The college was created for returning World War Two veterans eager to get an education and get on with their lives. Then and now, what we now call City Tech had a large number of students who served in the military.
The film had its premiere in the Ursula C. Schwerin library in November 2017. Approximately thirty people attended and enjoyed a catered lunch, the film screening, and panel discussion with many of the documentary’s subjects.
