- Tracci Dial here with another edition of Community Spotlight.

I am grateful to be joined by Dr. Ray Sun, Associate Professor of history at Washington State University.

Dr. Sun, thank you for being here.

- Thank you.

It's an honor.

- I am honored to be able to talk to you about this incredible project you've been working on since 2017, the Fallen Cougars Project.

Can you tell us what that is?

- I'd love to.

Thank you.

So the Fallen Cougars Project is an attempt to create a digital memorial to approximately 250 Washington State College war dead from the Second World War.

And the reason we're doing this is because although there is a physical memorial, very few people go by and no one knows who these fallen Cougars were at this point.

By creating a website, well tell their life stories with photos.

And I hope that it will make them relatable and very, very real to the 2020s generation and beyond.

- 2025 does mark 80 years since World War II ended and 250-ish Cougs... At this point youre about 95% done researching all of these veterans?

- That's correct.

- What have you found?

-Oh, boy.

We have found, in one sense, they're very much like our students today.

If you changed your clothes and, taught them with a cell phone was, I think they would fit right in.

We have found such a variety.

There are athletes, fraternity members, students who worked their way through...

Academics, artists, musicians, you know, so, they are they're very relatable.

They're very human.

And so I think when we talk about World War II, the World War II generation, there's a tendency to sort of put them in a box and, you know, ‘the Greatest Generation, they're different.

They were very much like us.

And so, the whole point of the project is to make them relatable.

For us to see them as they were, most of them in their 20s, late teens or 20s.

And to see that we have a lot of common connections.

We thank them for their service.

And thank you for your service as well as your full research team, Dr. Sun.

It's a fantastic project.

Can't wait to learn more about it.