Full Notification

Highlighting private correspondence from nearly every major conflict in U.S. history, the new exhibition, "War Comes Home: The Legacy" opens Monday, February 29, at the Civic Center Branch of the Chula Vista Library, 365 F Street. The traveling exhibit, on display through April 24, is rich with historic and contemporary letters, and offers an intimate perspective into the thoughts and emotions of military veterans and their families upon a soldier’s homecoming.

The exhibit is part of a larger project by the library to expand services to military veterans. These include new "Veteran's Collection" books in the right corner of the Veteran's Wing. The San Diego County Office of Military & Veterans Affairs will hold office hours on the third Wednesday of each month (March 16th), from 10am-2pm in the Veterans Wing, to assist you with filing benefits and consultation. More plans will be announced soon.

The exhibit is part of Cal Humanities’ current War Comes Home initiative, a thematic program designed to promote greater understanding of veterans and explore how war shapes a community. The exhibition is based on the work of the Center for American War Letters (CAWL) and is presented by Exhibit Envoy. Andrew Carroll, Director of CAWL and an award-winning and New York Times bestselling author, and John Benitz, Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre at Chapman University, co-curated the exhibition. Cal Humanities is an independent non-profit and State partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The exhibition explores the joys and hardships that returning soldiers and their families face during homecoming, as expressed through private letters and email correspondence. Spanning conflicts from the Civil War through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and displayed on thirteen interpretive panels, War Comes Home: The Legacy explores the shared themes of wartime separation, the adjustment to life back at home and the costs of war. As Staff Sergeant Parker Gyokeres writes, “Those of us coming back...are not looking for sympathy. We might be reluctant at first to talk about what we’ve been through...[but] your support has made this journey an incredible one.”

The exhibit is a partnership between Cal Humanities, the California State Library and Exhibit Envoy. It is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the BayTree Fund, The Whitman Fund, and the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered in California by the State Librarian.

For more information, please call the library at (619) 691-5069.
All Library programs are FREE and OPEN to the public. For more information on our programs, and to see our Calendar of Events, click on: http://www.chulavistalibrary.com to see our Events Calendar, or pick up a printed copy in any library branch.