Students get to know Ernie Pyle during visit to Dana
— By Amanda N. Marino
Drivers may hardly notice when they enter sleepy Dana, Indiana. Its quaint appearance is betrayed by the legend that walked its streets more than 100 years ago.
Students in the MSCH-J 418 Footsteps of Ernie Pyle class visited Ernie Pyle’s hometown recently to learn about the World War II correspondent’s roots. The course covers Pyle’s life and writing, and includes travel to Europe to follow his path across England and France, where he reported from the frontlines.
But Pyle’s journey began in tiny Dana. The Ernie Pyle WWII Museum includes a visitor’s center and the house in which Pyle was born. Fifteen students in the course split off into two groups before exploring the past.
Inside the visitor’s center, they saw artifacts from Pyle’s years covering the war in both Europe and the Pacific. One of his typewriters, his Purple Heart Award and other personal effects are stored in walls lined with enlarged copies of his columns.
Senior Kale Wilk didn’t look away from a display as he discussed what the museum meant to him on this, his third trip.
“He just really did such a hell of a job describing their lives,” he said of the IU journalism alumnus’ columns from the front, which earned a Pulitzer Prize.
Pyle’s columns were popular with newspaper readers at home because they focused on the soldiers’ experiences. An early “embedded” reporter, Pyle stayed among the troops when possible and befriended many of the men he later wrote about.
Voice recordings play throughout the building, allowing veterans to share their Pyle stories and actor William Windom to read the columns aloud.
An unassuming alcove called the Waskow Theater is devoted to one of Pyle’s most famous columns that detailed the death of Capt. Henry Waskow. After the short film, only one student broke the silence.
“That was so heavy.”
The interior of the Pyle house shows a replica, with furnishings of the period, because the family’s estate was auctioned off after his parent’s deaths. Despite this, the students envisioned what the house may have looked like when young Pyle grew up.
Docent Tom Cundiff shared a his wealth of knowledge with the students, discussing everything from social norms in the early 20th century to the fact that Pyle was a honeymoon baby.
“This guy had an enormous impact on the world,” Cundiff said.
“Hearing about Pyle’s early life in Dana helps students understand how small-town life shaped his writing,” said lecturer Bonnie Layton, who teaches the class and will lead the trip over spring break. “Students appreciate viewing, close up, the scenes behind his most famous war columns.”
This trip was the first real step students took outside the classroom in their efforts to get to know Pyle better. As they continue to prepare for their upcoming trip to London, Normandy and Paris, they will continue to focus their learning on not only Ernie Pyle the writer, but also Ernie Pyle the man.
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