Recent hit documentaries like “The Devil and Daniel Johnston” and “Tarnation” show the value of documenting one’s life. If there as anyone I have known who has done that, it’s Ken Hechler whose archives are stored at the Marshall University Library Archive.

Recently Ken has been documented in several ways including by Vanity Fair magazine in its April 2007 edition. He is shown along with two other members of the Truman White House as part of a photographic story on White House staffs from Truman to Clinton.

He also has been filmed giving presentations at different sites around the country. His presentation, “Goering and His Gang,” as part of The American History Forum in Sarasota, Florida held during the last weekend of January 2007 was filmed. He was interviewed by a Kanawha County Commissioner for a local cable TV show on the same subject. Ken made the front page of WWII magazine last fall because of his interview with Herman Goering immediately after the end of WWII.

Ken celebrated his 50 years of teaching in West Virginia on February 15^th at
Marshall University, giving a program both at the Student Union and at the
Marshall retirement home. The first program was taped for posterity.

Dr. Hechler has been busy giving other speeches. He gave one at The U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. about “The Bridge at Remagen” on the 62^nd anniversary of the capture of the bridge on March 7^th.. From April 8^th-10^th, he will be giving programs atWestern Kentucky University as part of the “Congress to Campus” program arranged by U.S. Former Members of Congress.

On April 12 he will lecture at the William Cullen Bryant Public Library, located in his birthplace of Roslyn, NY and on April 13^th at the CW Post College on “President Truman on Civil Rights.”

Hopefully WVPBS filmmaker Russ Barbour will be able to use some of these new documents for his feature length biographical film, “Ken Hechler: In Search of Justice,” sponsored by Marshall University Libraries. Russ showed a clip of this film last spring at The South Charleston Museum when he presented his landmark film, “West Virginians at War” that includes some footage of Hechler. I wonder how he will edit the life of a man who has lived every minute for almost a century down to just 120 minutes? As one student in Kansas called Ken after hearing him speak, “He is an entire living version of the Library of Congress!”

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