Public library honors World War II journalists Ernie Pyle, John Bushemi

The Monroe County Public Library is honoring Hoosier heroes Ernie Pyle and John Bushemi while marking its Archives and Special Collection Month.\nPyle, a journalist, and Bushemi, a photographer, brought the front lines of World War II to the home front, earning critical acclaim and appreciation before both lost their lives covering the war. The library is reviving the memory of the journalists through reflections on their life and work. \nHailing from Gary, Bushemi captured the horrors of war, mainly on the Pacific front. He covered the invasion of Eniwetok, part of the Marshall Islands, before dying in 1944. A new exhibit of Bushemi's photographs is on display on the second floor of the library and will run through the end of November.\nRay Boomhower, managing editor of the Indiana Historical Society's quarterly magazine, Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History, will shed light on Bushemi's life and work in a program at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the library.\n"To me, the most intriguing aspect of Bushemi's work is his ability to capture in his photographs the gritty existence of men on the front lines in the Pacific theater of operations during World War II," Boomhower said. "Even a hand injury suffered during the invasion of the Kwajalein Atoll that left his arm in a sling had not stopped Bushemi from documenting for (the magazine) Yank's readers the achievements gained and agonies endured by their fellow soldiers."\nBoomhower's continuous engagement with the works of Bushemi resulted in his book, "One Shot: The World War II Photography of John A. Bushemi." Several of Bushemi's photographs exhibited in the library are from "One Shot."\nPyle, from Dana, Ind., was a popular Scripps-Howard newspapers columnist during the war. The library is also using his articles and letters to convey the experience of war. \nIU journalism and history professor Owen V. Johnson held a program on Pyle's life and work at the library last week.\nJohnson has already collected more than 1,200 of Pyle's letters. \nPyle's newspaper columns from the front lines sought to convey war as the participant saw it and won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for distinguished war correspondence.\n"Pyle's name is known by thousands of journalists today, but they don't always understand who Pyle was and how he worked," Johnson said in an e-mail.\nJohnson's project is designed to help people understand Pyle's complex life through a wide range of ideas about the world of journalism and Pyle's experience as an IU student and a reporter at the Indiana Daily Student.\n"The public has shown a lot of interest in World War II, from war veterans to teenagers," reference librarian Luann Dillon said. "The availability of Ernie Pyle's original documents and Ray Boomhower's book on John Bushemi offered great scope to learn about the war and the two greats"