Public History Offers Splendid Service

The publication of Splendid Service: The Montana National Guard, 1867-2006 is the product of the 1998 Washington State University public history research seminar. Professor Orlan Svingen and fourteen graduate students undertook on a research project for the Montana National Guard in the spring of 1998. Public history is applied history, history that is used, applied, or presented outside of academic circles. Therefore, when Montana National Guard representatives approached Professor Svingen about researching and writing a history of the Montana National Guard, he organized his seminar around that topic. The “primary course objective” reads as follows:

In response to a request from the Montana National Guard [MT-ARNG] of Helena, Montana, this public history seminar will devote itself to researching and writing a history of the Montana National Guard, beginning with the establishment of Montana Territory in 1864 until the present. A funded contract exists between Washington State University and the MT-ARNG which supports certain activities and costs involved in the researching and writing phases of the work. The professor and graduate students will act in the capacity of paid consultants [employees] to the MT-ARNG [employer]. This will involve working within the guidelines outlined in the contract, meeting time schedules and providing draft and final “deliverables” to the client-MT-ARNG. Accordingly, each graduate student will research, write, submit, and revise a chapter length paper for this seminar.

In February of 1998, the seminar students travelled to Helena, Montana, where they were welcomed at Fort Harrison by Colonel Raymond Read, the lead MT-ARNG representative throughout the project. Next, General John Prendergast welcomed the students at the State Area Command Headquarters (STARC) in Helena. Shortly thereafter Montana Historical Society staff introduced the students to the Montana Historical Society collections. Colonel Read opened the Montana Military History Museum at Fort Harrison to them as well.

Later that spring, five students travelled with Professor Svingen to Washington D.C. to conduct research at the National Archives II at College Park, Maryland. The students did research in the National Guard Memorial Library collections housed in National Guard Memorial Building, the headquarters for the National Guard Association of the United States.

In time students drafts formed a finished manuscript and that won a publishing contract with Washington State University Press and it was a published in fall to 2010.

The progression and compilation of the drafts into a single manuscript yielded a publishing contract with Washington State University Press in 2004. In his forward to, Splendid Service, Brigadier General Hal Stearns acknowledged that Professor Svingen and his fourteen students worked tirelessly, researching, writing, and forming Splendid Service into a valuable written history of the Montana National Guard. In his foreword Brigadier General Bill Yeager observed that Splendid Service was built upon archival materials he never knew existed. “This book does a splendid job in describing the great things done by the Montana National Guard and the sacrifice and dedications of so many of its soldiers and airmen. That’s the way it should be,” General Yeager continued, “There is much for us to be proud of in the guard’s struggles in peacetime just to exist and of the brave and dedicated service in numerous wars and state emergencies.”

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