Portrait Photographer's Tribute To WWII Veterans
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DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - Approximately every three minutes, a World War II veteran dies.
It won't be long before all 16-million American veterans who served in WWII are gone.
This is why photographer Tom Sanders travels around the country to take what could be the final portrait for many American heroes.
Earlier this year Sanders stopped at the Belmont Village Senior Living at Turtle Creek in Dallas and took pictures of more than a dozen veterans.
In between the pictures taken, stories were shared. Some that have been rarely shared before.
"I don't think about it very often," World War II veteran Jim Nance said.
The P-47 Thunderbolt fighter pilot fought in more than a dozen missions.
"I loved to fly," Nance said. "But I didn't like too well being shot down."
During the Battle of the Bulge, Nance's plane took a hit and then hit the ground.
Nance made a run for it before eventually running into a German soldier.
He spent the next six months as a prisoner of war in Germany.
"I just did a job and got back alive," Nance explained.
It's stories like these that Sanders said he hopes to capture in his portraits.
"The veterans never think of themselves as heroes," said Sanders who has photographed more than a hundred veterans. Many of the portraits have been published in his book, The Last Good War: The Faces and Voices of World War II.
Sanders said this all started ten years ago with a college homework assignment when he photographed World War II Army Ranger Lt. Randall Harris.
Harris' story of how he continued to fight the Germans after having his legs and stomach torn open by a land mine explosion, changed Sanders' life.
"Right then I decided I needed to photograph and document as many WWII vets as possible," Sanders said. "I like to think about when I photograph all these older war veterans that I'm kind of giving them the opportunity to tell their stories."
A month after Sanders took the veterans' pictures in Dallas, he returned for the unveiling of the exhibit – "American Heroes: Portraits of Service" – at the Belmont Village Senior Living at Turtle Creek.
When seeing his portrait for the first time, Jim Nance said, "I just see an old man."
Sanders sees something different. He sees a hero.
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