BRATTLEBORO — Photographer Steve Hooper will present his award-winning short film on the World War I experience of Brattleboro nurse Marion McCune Rice, An American Nurse at War, for the Brattleboro Words Project's monthly Roundtable Discussion on Thursday, March 14, at 118 Elliot at 6 p.m. The event is free and refreshments will be served.
Through written accounts and the many photos Rice took, the 34-minute film chronicles the Red Cross nurse's four years serving in French military hospitals during World War I.
During her time in France, Rice took hundreds of photos on her Kodak camera, and along with the many letters she and the wounded soldiers wrote, these offer a local's firsthand experience of a bygone time in An American Nurse at War.
Rice was born in Brattleboro in 1882 and graduated from Brattleboro High School in 1900 before attending Smith College and nursing school in Philadelphia. She volunteered as a Red Cross nurse during World War I and, in 1925, she was named director of the Simmons School of Public Health Nursing in Boston. She was the sister of Howard Crosby Rice, longtime publisher of the Brattleboro Reformer, and spent summers at her home on Chestnut Hill.
She retired to a small cottage at 90 Chestnut Hill, where she resided until her death in 1955. The film about her time in World War I is produced by her grandnephew, Steve Hooper, and honors a local woman's war service in her own words.
Roundtable Discussions are also an opportunity for Words Project research leaders and teachers to share information and inspiration and for members of the public to discover how they too can participate in making podcasts about sites and themes important to our region's storied past.
The Brattleboro Words Project is a multi-year collaboration between the Brattleboro Historical Society, the Brattleboro Literary Festival, Write Action, Brooks Memorial Library and Marlboro College, and is backed by a National Endowment for the Humanities matching grant.
The Project seeks public participation in research, writing, and creating a 'Brattleboro Words Trail,' audio linked to sites of interest in the history of words for walking, biking and driving tours of our area, a book on Brattleboro's printing and publishing history, and other events linked to the October Brattleboro Literary Festival and throughout the year.
For more information, visit www.brattleborowords.org.