The timing was right for the release of John Gfroerer’s documentary focusing on New Hampshire role during World War II.
It was 1994, the 50th anniversary of D-Day. Through the early 1990s, tributes seemed to arise every few months as another landmark battle was commemorated for its historical significance 50 years before.
“We were living through all of these 50th anniversaries of major battles from World War II, and I was thinking these people have stories to tell,” said Gfroerer, founder of Concord-based Accompany Video Production. “Everyone was doing pieces about World War II. It was in the air.”
But Gfroerer’s documentary was not about the war in Europe, but rather the implications it had on those who stayed behind in New Hampshire. Calls to purchase war bonds filled the airwaves and advertising space in newspapers, a run to the market for food was limited by the ration coupons you had in your pocket.
The war abroad created an environment back home where most focused on one goal: win the war.
“The United States was never more united,” Gfroerer said. “We wanted to try to understand that era a little better.”
Gfroerer has produced more than 40 documentaries about life and history in New Hampshire and Maine. He also written for the Boston Globe, New York Times and is on the Monitor’s board of contributors. But his portrait of Granite Staters during this war keeps drawing him back to towns across the state to show the film and discuss the stories in it.
“World War II changed everything,” Gfroerer said. “Everything in our society was forever transformed from that moment, that five-year moment in time. And we feel these effects today.”
One example he cites is the way sharing news changed during the war. In Concord, advertisements appeared in the Monitor in the days leading up to D-Day, telling residents the fire horn would sound when news of the invasion reached the states. That would be the indication for people to turn on their radios and listen to the news broadcast.
For decades before the war, church bells would ring in the center of town and people would rush to town hall to hear the news. But in the ’40s, with the nation involved in a global war that nearly everyone was closely aware of, the desire for immediacy in news was apparent and radio delivered.
“Everyone had kids, family members, neighbors over there,” Gfroerer said. “Concord time, the news came in the middle of the night . . . and everyone came into work late the next day.
“Think about that as a community,” he added. “Now, we isolate ourselves. When you heard the horn on June 6, 1944, you knew D-Day was happening.”
Throughout the year, Gfroerer continues to show this film in libraries and town halls across the state. He’ll air the film at Meredith Public Library tonight with a discussion to follow. In the last three years, Gfroerer said he has hosted viewings and talks around the film a dozen times.
The movie took about one year to produce, with source material developed from local people who lived through the era as well as information and images gathered in Washington, D.C.
In New Hampshire, Gfroerer filed through newspaper archives between 1939 and 1940, trying to capture the daily nuances of the time. He also set up interviews with about 40 people across the state.
“We reached out to nursing homes, people we already knew, everybody,” he said. “Anyone who wanted to come and be a part of this story could come.”
Gfroerer is currently working on three documentaries in his office at the Capitol Center for the Arts, including one about the re-gilding of the State House dome. Last year he made a film, 2015 Concord, that was included in the time capsule buried as part of the Concord 250 celebration. The movie profiled life in Concord for the folks in 2065 to see and understand what the city was like around this time.
Gfroerer stopped selling copies of the movie after it was buried in the time capsule because he didn’t want “it to be a dusty old thing on people’s shelves in 50 years.”
“It’s weird to think this piece I produced, I will never know what people think,” he said.