A movie, "Our Four Years at West Point," premiered at the Thayer during our Class Reunion. Many of the attendees saw the movie and I have been seeking a way for all to see it.  After several attempts to "stream" the video, I turned to YouTube as a solution.  The trouble is that YouTube limits each video to 10 minutes.  To get around this constraint, I edited the video for content and broke it into 4 parts.  

A little about the making of "Our Four Years at West Point."  Several months before the reunion, I started to collect stories and images.  John Ward's compilation of stories that you all sent in was a treasure trove for stories and images. (John, you are the man!)  I cherry-picked stores from the   Ward Book, 4 Howitzers, official records, inputs from classmates, and the Web.  I stumbled across footage of West Point in the early '60s and received permission to include selections in the video. I wrote a script to serve as the tree trunk to hang on the leaves of photos and short stores and then constructedd a video using a program called Pinnacle.

What was lacking was narration - the essential ingredient for telling the stories. I would like to have had the person involved in the original event to tell his own story, but time and distance precluded such inputs. Max Johnson agreed to narrate the video and, I'm pleased to say, he did an excellent and professional job.

I hope that the video brings back memories of our life at West Point.  I know that putting the video together cause me to remember the people    I met and the experiences I had. I hope that  your rememberances are as good as mine are.

As you view the video, go from part 1 through part 4 in order.  See it at:

 http://www.youtube.com/user/rachelsgramps#g/u