UWF / Community
“Their Vietnam: Voices of Azalea Trace” debuts Nov. 10 at the Center for Fine and Performing Arts. The event is free.
The University of West Florida Department of History and Philosophy will premiere “Their Vietnam: Voices of Azalea Trace” on Tuesday, Nov. 10, at the UWF Center for Fine and Performing Arts Mainstage Theatre. The documentary grew out of a yearlong public history oral history project.
If you go
- When: Tuesday, Nov. 10. Reception at 6:30 p.m., premiere at 7 p.m.
- Where: UWF Center for Fine and Performing Arts, Mainstage Theatre
- Cost: Free and open to the public
- Length: About 1 hour, 40 minutes
- Registration: Requested. Register here.
How the project began. UWF students set out to record the firsthand experiences of Vietnam veterans living at Pensacola’s Azalea Trace retirement community. The project had two central goals: to preserve the veterans’ histories for future generations and to give students hands-on training in oral history, interviewing, transcription, and other professional skills used in public history.
“The project has been a joy to be a part of and is enriching for all involved,” said Dr. Erin Stone, chair of the UWF Department of History and Philosophy.
Stone said the students “gained practical experience working as historians while also recording an important part of U.S. and Pensacola history.”
Student historians at work. Under the guidance of UWF faculty Joyce Southard and Nathan Smith, undergraduate and graduate students conducted interviews with Azalea Trace veterans between September and October 2025. The work helped preserve personal accounts that might otherwise be lost. The project also explored other ways to share the histories with the public, including documentary film and publication.
- “Through these interviews, students in my Vietnam War course had the opportunity to learn from the firsthand accounts of those who experienced the war,” Southard said.
Why they talked. Vietnam veteran Miles Davis told interviewers that military service and war taught lessons impossible to acquire elsewhere. He recalled that he “put on a lot of years” during his first year in Vietnam.
- Asked why he agreed to participate, Davis said he wanted younger generations who had only heard about Vietnam to understand what soldiers experienced, thought, and felt. He stressed the importance of preserving those experiences and lessons while the people who lived them can still tell their stories.
To learn more about the UWF Department of History and Philosophy, visit uwf.edu/history.