For Hermann Trojanowski ’98 MLIS, supporting the Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project is a tribute to its founder and an investment in remembrance.
Housed in the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, the project was founded in 1998 by the late University Archivist Betty H. Carter. She created it after hearing alumni discuss the impact of women veterans from Woman’s College following World War II. The project documents the experiences of women in the U.S. armed forces and the American Red Cross from World War I to the present. It features more than 750 individual collections containing more than 485 oral histories, photographs, letters, diaries, scrapbooks, uniforms, and insignia. Today, the collection is widely recognized as one of the nation’s most significant repositories documenting women’s military service.
Trojanowski, a faculty emeritus archivist who spent decades preserving the University’s history, dedicated much of his career to collecting, recording, and sharing these veterans’ stories, and still volunteers twice a week for the Women Veterans Historical Project.
As a U.S. Air Force veteran, he understands military service and believes women veterans deserve greater recognition for their contributions to the United States. He is committed to preserving their voices and ensuring that future generations understand the sacrifices, leadership, and resilience of these women.
The first woman Trojanowski interviewed was World War II veteran Virginia “Ginny” Gilbert Mattson, who served with the U.S. Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). By the time he retired in 2013, he had completed nearly 100 interviews with female veterans, traveling across the nation to record their experiences. “Every woman I interviewed was so gracious and happy to share their stories,” he says.
Trojanowski fondly remembers interviewing Daphine Doster Mastroianni (1906-2000) of Monroe, N.C., who graduated from the North Carolina College for Women (now UNCG) in 1927. She served in New Zealand, Fiji, and India with the Army Nurse Corps from 1942 to 1945. “While stationed overseas, she met Joe Mastroianni, who was with the American Red Cross, and they fell in love,” he says. “He was married, and they went their separate ways; however, after his wife died, they married in 1992. Their story became part of the musical ‘Star Spangled Girls’ commissioned by the Women Veterans Historical Project in 2011.”
Trojanowski says he has always wanted to leave something to the University that educated him and helped him discover a career he loves. In 2006, he established the Hermann J. Trojanowski Endowed Fund to honor Carter and sustain the project. Recently, he increased his planned estate gift to the fund to help the collection continue to grow.
His work showed him the power of personal testimony and the generosity of women veterans who entrusted their histories to this project. “That’s what inspired me to start this fund and to keep it going,” he says. “For me, the endowment is about more than preserving archival materials. It is an investment in remembrance.”
By Jo Carrol Torrez
Photography by Sean Norona