World War I subject of museum program

MOSES LAKE — The story of World War I in Washington – mostly told in the words of the people who lived through it – will be the subject of a presentation at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Moses Lake Museum & Art Center.

“Washington at War: The Evergreen State in World War I” is being sponsored in conjunction with a current museum exhibit on the war in Grant County. Admission is free.

Lorraine McConaghy is the speaker. The program is sponsored by Humanities Washington and the Kameetsa chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

McConaghy called it “readers theater.” Participants will read original documents from the period 1910-20; the Great War, as it was sometimes called, was part of a decade of tumultuous events, she said.

In the 1920s and 1930s World War I frequently was just called the War, as if there had never been another war – it had that kind of impact on the people who lived through it. The battles of 1914-18 still cast their shadows today.

But the war came along at a time of turmoil. The controversial fight to outlaw liquor, which went down in history as Prohibition. The arguments over giving women the right to vote. (Washington gave women the vote in 1910, and approved statewide prohibition in 1916.)

Many dock workers, loggers and mill hands gravitated toward the radical politics of the Industrial Workers of the World. And the U.S., Washington included, was working to assimilate and accommodate millions of immigrants. McConaghy said research indicates that 22.4 of Washington’s population was foreign-born in 1910.

The questions of war and peace were added to the arguments over working conditions and wages, immigration and assimilation, women’s rights, whether or not to outlaw booze, among much else. When the U.S. declared war in 1917 all those controversies crashed together, complicated by the war effort. And just as the war was ending, the entire world was subjected to one of the deadliest epidemics in history.

McConaghy said many of the same issues are still under discussion today, and that the participants can use the historical record to shed light on the present.

November 11 is the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. The regional DAR chapter worked with local museums to create an exhibit detailing the experience of Grant County residents in World War I. It’s on display at the Moses Lake museum through May; it moves to the Grant County Museum in Ephrata in June and July and travels to the Grant County Fair in August, with its final stop at the Quincy Valley Historical Society.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.