Week 21: Yearbooks - Fort Leonard Wood Army Training Center

      Yearbooks are a fantastic source for locating pictures of your ancestors and learning more about a particular time in their lives. I have all my yearbooks from when I was in school from my Elementary years up to High School. I also have my parents' yearbooks in my collection now. Ancestry.com has been growing its yearbook collection as well and, thanks to them, I've been able to download many copies of ancestors' yearbooks. But there is a collection that I haven't found anywhere else as of yet. And this prompt is giving me the perfect opportunity to announce a project I've been working on as well.

    One yearbook I inherited that was in my dad's collection was his Fort Leonard Wood Army Training Center Yearbook from when he attended. He went through the training center in preparation for Vietnam. I remembered going through it with him one time before he had passed. He said they were stock yearbooks in which a section was added that included their photos. It still gave me an insight into the training he went through while attending the Army Training Center.

    Fast forward to last year when I went to the South County Antique Mall. I had a specific item I was looking for in the book sections when I came across the cover of a yearbook I was very familiar with. It was a Fort Leonard Wood Army Training Center yearbook. Granted it was from a different year, but it still resembled my dad's yearbook. I was so shocked anyone would sell their relative's yearbook. Soon after, I found more yearbooks from Fort Leonard Wood. My mind just couldn't process this. Do you know how many people I've seen post on the internet wishing they had their Father's yearbook or even just a photograph? That's when I came up with an idea.

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Read my blog post

Antique Malls and Fort Leonard Wood Yearbooks

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    After searching online, I have yet to find a Fort Leonard Wood Training Center Yearbook collection on websites like Fold 3 and Ancestry. I know every day more and more collections are being digitized and added to their sites, but they are usually behind a paywall. I wanted to make these yearbooks available to anyone and everyone. So that's why I would like to share the website I created just for these yearbooks.

www.FtLeonardWoodYearbooks.com

    This website is a collection of yearbook pages containing graduates from Fort Leonard Wood Army Training Center in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. The years included will be 1959-1967. The focus will mainly be on the Vietnam War era. Please visit my site to learn more about this project.

    I am still working on getting the yearbook pages added that I have in my collection. It is very time-consuming typing all the names into the site and scanning the pages for viewing. My goal is to make this site searchable for anyone who visits which is why I am typing each name individually into the site. That way the search engine will pick up the names. That will be the last task I will work on, but for now, you can go to each yearbook and use Ctrl + F to search for a name. 

    If you have any suggestions, please let me know. I want this site to be as user-friendly as possible. I am also hoping to grow my collection very soon. I will be on the lookout for more yearbooks when I start going to yard sales, estate sales, and antique malls. 

This project is dedicated to my Dad and all those soldiers who fought in Vietnam. May their sacrifices never be forgotten.

SSG Dennis G. Fuchs