He Tells Their Stories

Bill Krieger’s prospects weren’t looking bright in 1983.

He had graduated from Lansing’s Eastern High School, but “bombed out of college,” and his East Lansing girlfriend had dumped him. Add to that an economy in recession and Krieger found himself at a standstill.

“The job prospects weren’t all that great for you if you didn’t have some sort of education,” he said in an interview with ELi. “And so that really prompted me to join the military.”

Krieger would serve the next 10 years in the U.S. Navy, working as a guided missile computer technician. In 1999, he was missing his time in the service and joined the Michigan National Guard. He would complete a tour in Iraq as a military police company commander.

“When I returned from Iraq in 2007,” he said, “I really struggled with mental health to the point where I was suicidal. I went and saw a really good therapist and started doing storytelling with NPR’s Moth Radio Hour and then also with USA Today Storytellers Project. I would tell my stories about what I went through in the military, and especially my story of attempted suicide. 

“It was really, really beneficial for me. It really was cathartic when I would tell these stories.”

Krieger noticed that at the end of each storytelling event, people would approach him, telling him how they had experienced similar feelings.

This interest in storytelling led him to start a podcast during the pandemic for Consumers Energy, his long time employer. 

“I interviewed just about everybody,” he said. “I interviewed the CEO of Consumers Energy, I interviewed politicians, and we talked about personal well-being. We went from five listeners to 3,000 listeners a month by the time I retired.”

Krieger took this newfound interest and thought of how he could use it to help the men and women he had served with. In 2022, he launched the nonprofit organization Veterans Archives, which shares the stories of veterans. 

“I love veterans,” he said. “My best friends are veterans. So let’s get veterans to tell their stories. It’s going to help them and it’s going to help other people.

Since its founding, Veterans Archives has helped 105 veterans record their stories. The video interviews are stored on the organization’s website, YouTube, and clips can be seen on TikTok and all across social media.

Krieger said he finds veterans more willing to open up because he himself is a veteran.

“It’s a veteran-to-veteran conversation,” he said. “I speak the language. My stepfather was a former Marine. I spent time in the Navy, I was in the Army. I kind of speak the language. I understand how to thoughtfully ask the questions, and understand when not to push it.

“The other thing is, I don’t just sit down with a veteran and say, ‘Let’s swap war stories.’ We capture the whole veteran. I talk to them about what it was like growing up, what was [their] family life like, how was school, what prompted [them] to join the military.”

Krieger said he doesn’t focus on just those in combat, having interviewed many men and women who served between the Korean and Vietnam Wars, a time when there were few combat situations but the draft was still in effect.

“I interviewed a guy who served for less than a year because he ended up getting injured so badly in basic training,” he said. “But he still served.

“I think that’s what people can learn from these stories…these people are your neighbors. You may have a neighbor you don’t even know is a veteran because [they don’t] talk about it.”

Duty to Share Story

East Lansing’s Bill Murphy is one of those veterans who didn’t share his story for years.

Murphy enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1967, doing a tour in Vietnam.

“The war was becoming front and center [and] seemed to be affecting every part of your life,” he said. “Most high school and college guys knew they would have to face it at some point. I felt the calls were legitimate; a sovereign country was being invaded and they needed our help.”

When he returned from his tour of duty, there were no parades or welcome home celebrations.

“You got off the bus, the train, the airplane, and went back to your life as if nothing happened,” Murphy said. “The veteran never brought up the subject. People I worked with for 10, 15, 20 years, they didn’t know I had been in Vietnam.”

Murphy recalled once being told, “You were one of those baby killers” when someone found out he had served in Vietnam.

Decades after his time in southeast Asia, Murphy decided to finally share his story.

“There were two reasons,” he said. “First, I wanted to educate, or illuminate. A very large part of the population wasn’t alive [during the Vietnam War] and had no idea what that huge issue was about. And the ones that had been alive had forgotten about it.

“I also wanted to honor them. The spoken word promises we made, [that] we will make sure they are never forgotten, that people remember them.”

In 2021, he published his story in his book Not for God and Country. For the first time, he shared his day-to-day experiences in Vietnam – the camaraderie, the monsoons, the aftermath.

“I feel like I had done my part,” he said. “I had done what I could to make sure America did not forget Vietnam and I had done my part to make sure the memories of these 60,000 young men would be remembered. It was not really cathartic. It wasn’t fun writing at all. It was more of a duty.”

Murphy hasn’t shared his story with Krieger’s organization yet, but is grateful that fellow veterans have the opportunity to be heard.

“I want to extend my heartfelt appreciation to Mr. Bill Krieger and the Veterans Archives organization,” he said. “Obtaining and preserving the experiences and knowledge of veterans has many benefits. The process confirms that the sacrifices of veterans are important and worthy of remembering on a personal level, but also that the broad knowledge possessed by veterans has educational value by being shared with adults and children alike. The hard earned wisdom of veterans should be preserved and shared, and their efforts should be honored. The Veterans Archives achieves these important objectives.”

The never-ending job

The feeling of duty is familiar to Krieger, as well.

When asked who helps him with the day-to-day work of the nonprofit organization — the interviewing, filming, editing, and distribution — he replied with a simple, “that’s me.”

There are two other individuals on the organization’s board (his wife being one of them), but he himself does the work of connecting with the veterans, obtaining their narratives, and sharing them with the world.

Krieger set a goal for 2025: 100 interviews. 

“We’re at, I think, 42 or 43,” he said. “We’re on target. To reach that goal, one of the things we have to do is fundraise, because in order to do 100 stories, if you do the math, it’s $25,000.”

He explained each episode or interview costs approximately $250 to produce.

“The veteran gets a copy of their story on a memory card,” he said. “They’ll get it in a nice wooden box with our logo on top and a challenge coin, as well. But when you look at the equipment and all the stuff that has to be done [conduct the interview and in post-production], it’s roughly $250 every time we do it.”

Veterans Archives has received grants from Consumers Energy, the Hannover Re Foundation, in addition to private donations. The organization is also hosting a golf outing in September.

“That’s how we raise the funds,” he said, “but even if there’s no money in the bank, we’re gonna go out and do the recordings.”

At no point during our interview does Krieger consult any notes or need to pause to remember a name or interview he conducted. He rattles off example after example of the veterans he’s met.

“I Interviewed a guy that was 100 years old a couple weeks ago,” he said. “Him and his wife have been married for 75 years [and] still live in the same house that they lived in when they got married.”

He recalls another interview with special connections to East Lansing and Michigan State University (MSU).

“Dr. William Anderson was one of the first African American Osteopathic doctors in the world,” he said. “He grew up in Americus, Georgia; his grandparents were former slaves.

“He lied about his age to join the Navy and, as a Black person during World War II, you could either be a steward who served food or you could be a deckhand.”

Krieger relates that Anderson went to the ship’s captain and asked to be a medical corpsman.

“The captain said, ‘I’m sorry [but] you’re Black. You can’t do it.’”

Anderson was persistent and a time arose when a corpsman was needed but none could be found. The captain sent him to corpsman school.

“He was the only African American in the entire school,” Krieger said.

Anderson would become an educator at MSU, would work with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and is the namesake for the College of Osteopathic Medicine’s “Road from Slavery to Freedom.”

Krieger knows his organization likely won’t exist forever.

“My goal is to have a good set of maybe 400 or 500 stories,” he said, “and then work with a larger nonprofit who would like to just take over and make sure that we do live on in perpetuity. If that doesn’t happen, there’s ways to set up endowments and funds and things like that to keep going.”

The East Lansing resident is eager to connect with as many people as he can.

“Contact me,” he said. “My phone number is on the website, but there’s also a contact form that you can fill out. If you’re [with the] Kiwanis or any kind of social club, I would love to come talk to your folks about what we do.

“If there’s even a single veteran that I can speak with, it’s a valuable opportunity.”

Bill Murphy will be signing copies of his books at Schuler Books in Okemos on June 17 from 6 to 8 p.m.