The Box That Almost Went in the Trash
Quick answer: What did Jason Hurdle find in his garage in Waterloo, New York?
Behind a sheet of plywood, bus mechanic Jason Hurdle found a box of nearly 300 pages of U.S. government records from 1945, including firsthand statements from more than 120 American soldiers and airmen held as prisoners of Nazi Germany. The National Archives didn't know they existed. He nearly threw them away.
Jason Hurdle fixes school buses for a living. Making room in his Waterloo, New York, garage for Halloween decorations, he pulled away a sheet of plywood and found a crawl space he'd never seen. Inside was a soft old cardboard box of yellowed paper. He carried it to the driveway to throw out, and the wind flipped the top sheet: SECRET, stamped in red. He set the box down. As reported by The Washington Post, it held close to 300 pages of U.S. records from the war's final months, including written statements from more than 120 American soldiers and airmen who had been prisoners of Nazi Germany. The National Archives didn't know they existed. Many of those men passed through Camp Lucky Strike in Normandy, sat at folding tables, wrote down the worst things they'd seen, then went home and never spoke of it. John's ask is simple: call the oldest person in your family this week and ask the question you've never asked.
Why it matters for leaders: History survives because someone bothers to look twice; be the person who saves the story before it goes in the trash.
Q: Where were the POW statements likely written?
A: Many liberated American POWs passed through Camp Lucky Strike, a tent city on the Normandy coast near Saint-Valery-en-Caux, where they wrote down what they'd seen.
Q: What does John suggest readers do?
A: Call the oldest person in your family and ask the question you've never asked, and sit down with someone who can still put names to old photographs.
Read the full essay on Substack → https://heroespath.substack.com/p/the-box-that-almost-went-in-the-trash
By John Fenzel, founder and CEO of Heroes' Path Foundation