The Curious Trunk & the Lost Cairn: An AFS Historian's Journey

Welcome back to The AFS Exchange for the second part of our Founders' Day celebration! After covering the "when" and "what" of AFS's start in WWI in our last episode, we're now diving into the "who"- the people who were there, the early volunteer drivers. 

Join us as we talk with historian Thomas Fife and get a glimpse into the lives of four of these individuals, uncovering some truly unexpected connections and poignant moments. 

We'll also hear about Thomas's own journey into this history, which began with a random trunk he bought in Ohio and led him to the quest of locating a 100-year-old cairn in France. It's clear that the impact of AFS began long before student exchanges, touching lives in surprising ways.

Guest:
Thomas Fife

Study Abroad with AFS-USA: www.afsusa.org/study-abroad
Volunteer with AFS-USA: www.afsusa.org/volunteer
Host with AFS-USA: www.afsusa.org/host
Educator Resources: www.afsusa.org/educators
Contact us: podcast@afsusa.org

Chapters

• 4:58 Waldo Peirce
• 14:12 Alwyn Inness-Brown
• 16:37 James Osgood Perkins
• 19:12 Kenneth R. Fowler
• 23:24 Richard Hall
• 26:41 Hunt for the Cairn

Transcript

Kate M.
Hello and welcome to The AFS Exchange. I'm Kate Mulvihill. On this podcast, we share real stories from the AFS community. We're here to explore how exchange experiences change lives, one conversation at a time.

Thomas Fife
I don't know if the road even exists anymore. I don't know if it isn't overgrown. Was it paved and expanded? Did they bulldoze the cairn away, not knowing what it was? I mean, who knows? It's been 100, whatever, years.

Kate M.
Hello again, and welcome to the second part of our Founders' Day Special. In our previous episode, we journeyed back to the beginnings of the American Field Service during World War I, looking at the What and the Why. Now, we're going deeper, focusing on the human stories behind the history- the Who. We're delighted to welcome back historian Thomas Fife, who will guide us through his remarkable quest to uncover these personal experiences. We’ll also hear the story behind a simple stone marker, a cairn, erected in the mountains of eastern France for a fallen volunteer driver, and Thomas’s journey to locate this humble memorial, over a century later.
Also, you don't have to listen to the first episode of this Founders’ Day Special- called Driving Change- before listening to this one, but it would help provide some context. 

[Music]

Thomas Fife   
My name is Thomas William Fife. I am an amateur historian and writer about to publish a book on the history of the early days of the American Field Service and the creation of what becomes Section Three.

Kate M.
Professionally, Thomas is a special effects technician. But his hobby seems to take up just as much space in his life as his day job.

Thomas Fife
I have been a history nerd since I was a kid. And growing up in the South, I tell people that if people talk about the war, they're only talking about one war, at least when I was growing up, they're talking about the American Civil War. The first world war seems sort of mysterious, and it's not a subject that gets all the movies and the books, like World War II does, or the American Civil War does.

Kate M.
The path to uncovering the stories of these early ambulance drivers began with a surprising discovery, not on the battlefields of France, actually via Ohio.

Thomas FIfe
I was given the opportunity to purchase two foot lockers, or one was a Foot Locker and one was a steamer truck that had belonged to a man named Louis Gilger.
He and his brother, Carrol, had volunteered with the American Field Service in the summer of 1917.

Kate M.
But these weren't just any old trunks.

Thomas Fife
And these two trunks were like time capsules. I purchased them from a dealer who lived in Ohio.I 'm assuming these things were probably sold at auction when they were, you know, wrapping up his estate and selling off all the things that the family didn't want, and fortunately, these things had not been pilfered by other people along the way.

Kate M.
One trunk was full of items from Louis’s time in the US Army during World War I, and the other, items related to the American Field Service.

Thomas Fife
And I had heard of this mysterious group of ambulance drivers that people kind of dismissed as all those were Red Cross guys. But my curiosity propelled me to investigate. And the more I looked and read, the more interested I became. So it became sort of a driving interest and passion.

Kate M.
But this wasn’t just about acquiring historical artifacts.

Thomas Fife
I sought out the material, but I also sought out the literature and the data.
You also gotta remember back in the day, this was when eBay was first new. It was like the world's largest antique store.

Kate M.
Turns out, the early days of eBay were good for more than just reselling Beanie Babies.

Thomas Fife
If you talk to a lot of antique collectors, whether it's furniture, whatever it is that they're collecting, a lot of times it's just the artifact, you know, it's the desk or the lamp, or, in the case of military items, it's the helmet or the sword or the metal. And I, because of Louis, everything was named, I was curious about who he was. That was the turning point.

Kate M.
Thomas's curiosity about Louis Gilger just kept growing. Suddenly, anything AFS-related caught his eye. And then came an opportunity to buy something that really sparked a bigger project for him. Well, the first iteration for a project, anyway.

Thomas Fife
Eventually I was given the opportunity to purchase some material that was identified to Waldo Pierce.

[Ragtimey music]

Kate M.
Waldo was one of the volunteer drivers from Section Three. A Harvard man. Friends with Ernest Hemmingway. And also… quite a character. I will do a deep dive into some more of the volunteers later on, but I want to give a little introduction to Waldo now, as he was a key inspiration for Thomas's eventual project.

Thomas Fife
Called the last of the Bohemians and or American Renoir. He was a painter. He was an artist. And Waldo was a really larger than life kind of gregarious fellow. Everybody that knew Waldo had a Waldo story.

Kate
Picture this: a tall guy, like 6’2”, with a big beard, which was pretty unusual back then. You'd often see him with a cigar, casually wearing a sweatshirt, sneakers, and jeans, standing right next to guys in suits.

Thomas Fife
The difference between being eccentric and being crazy, I think, is how much money you have. You can be as nutty as you want to if you’ve got a lot of money in your bank account.
And I think some of these young guys sort of live vicariously through Waldo, because he had, he had the courage, or the, you know, the confidence to, you know, be a little crazier than maybe they, they wish they could be.

Kate M.
Thomas was given the opportunity to purchase some of Waldo’s belongings directly from his family. Scrapbooks and sketchbooks and some German souvenirs, uniforms that he wore. But one thing really popped out to him:

Thomas Fife
But the photo albums were really compelling. And when I got the photo albums, my first reaction was, but this was like a really great book. I could write and illustrate a small book about Waldo about his time during World War I as an ambulance driver.
If I'd had any idea at the time how, what a long trail that would have led me, I don't know.

Kate M.
I’ll give you a hint… that’s where Thomas's project starts, but that’s far from where it ends up.

Thomas Fife
And as I delved into Waldo's life, there are faces in the photos that reoccur. They're obviously his friends in the unit that he's with. And I like, well, who are these guys?

Kate M.
So Thomas did what any curious historian would do: he dug up some books. There were a couple out there! Among them, "Friends of France” and "History of the American Field Service in Europe." But the more books Thomas picked up, the more photos he saw, and the more questions he had.

Thomas Fife
I started to try to identify the guys that continually reappear in Waldo’s photos. And that's how I went down the rabbit hole.

Kate M.
So one could maybe see this as a solitary pursuit. There are some books out already, there’s the library, there’s the internet, ancestry.com… but Thomas wasn’t satisfied with that. He knew that to really understand these men, he needed to go beyond the public record, to tap into memories and stories that may never have been written down. He was starting this journey almost a hundred years after Section Three began.

Thomas Fife
I would identify them, want to figure out who they were, exhaust the ready available information that I could find, then I would go to ancestry.com. Because the question I was trying to try to understand was who they were, and again, why? Why would they do this?

Kate M.
You can hear more about “why” these men did this in the first episode. It’s the “who” that we will be getting into here. Thomas saw these faces in Waldo's photos and knew that to truly understand Waldo, he needed to understand his world, his comrades.

Thomas Fife
In looking them up, I started creating these little, at first, small family trees. I want to know who their parents were, who their grandparents were. And I realized that by working from their time to the present, I was finding living descendants. So I started picking up the phone, cold, calling people. Yeah, I figured that I had about a 30-second window.

Kate M.
If I may present a short scene. Please suspend your disbelief, because I will not be able to make myself sound like Thomas.

[Ring ring]
[Phone static]

Pretend Descendant
Hello?

Pretend Thomas
Hi, I know this is an odd question but are you a descendant of Allyn Jennings?

Pretend Descendant
Uh, yes, he was my great great uncle. How did you get this number?

Pretend Tom
Oh, wonderful! My name is Thomas Fife, and I'm a historian from Georgia currently researching the experiences of the AFS volunteers in World War I. I came across Allyn’s name in my research. I was hoping you might have some information or family stories related to his time in France.

Pretend Descendant
Hmm, I don't know... My parents might have some old things. What exactly are you looking for?

Pretend Tom
Anything really- letters he might have written home, diaries, photographs, anything that has been passed down about his experience as a volunteer ambulance driver. Anything that could give a more personal glimpse into what it was like for the drivers.

Kate M.
And… scene.

Thomas Fife   
And the response was crazy. I'd find one relative, and then, of course, they'd immediately get on the phone and call the sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles and cousins, and the next thing I know, I'd have, you know, in some times, 15 different people, 20 different people from one family, emailing me, providing me with the information.

Kate M.
Through these connections, Thomas reached an astonishing number of descendants. Over the course of his research, he has gotten in touch with the descendants of 86 of the 104 Section Three drivers. Many of these relatives had never met the drivers themselves, and none had met Thomas. Yet, they embraced his quest.

Thomas Fife
There were times where these people who didn't know me were sending me the original documents. Wow, I would come home from work and there'd be a 100 year old diary in my mailbox, there'd be a 100 year old photo album, you know, my front porch, just with a lovely little note, just return it when you're done.

Kate M.
This trust was deeply felt by Thomas.

Thomas Fife
It was very humbling and gratifying, and I took that trust seriously. A lot of these people, I think, were interested in the fact that I was interested in their family, their ancestors. They found that gratifying. And nobody ever turned me down. Some families didn't have anything. Things happened, flood fires, you know, spring cleanings in 1954, just thrown out in the trash. But for the most part, again, the response is overwhelming.

Kate M.
His role in these families' histories grew beyond just a researcher.

Thomas Fife
And so there were instances that I was finding cousins that didn't know each other today, and I became the common denominator, and I was introducing this cousin to that cousin and and on the email chain.
Every succeeding generation, it seemed like that the family artifacts would get spread a little thinner and thinner and thinner until there were photos that were in one distant family's archive and letters that were in another distant family's archives. And again, you know, do you know your third cousins personally? Yeah, well, there you go.

Kate M.
Thomas's dedication extended beyond phone calls and emails. He has even given talks, like one at Wilderstein Historic Estate, in Rhinebeck, New York. While he was up there in 2018, Thomas had the opportunity to meet many of the descendants face-to-face. Nearly all of the Section Three drivers had roots in the Northeast, and many of their descendants still lived in the area.

Thomas Fife
And then I spent the next four weeks crisscrossing New England and New York, visiting with as many of these families as I could. And that was an adventure, because in four weeks, I think I always spent maybe three nights in a hotel. They brought me in, fed me, they opened up and that the tragic part is the children of these World War I veterans are the World War II generation, and as you might imagine, they're rapidly fading. I've lost some of these people I got really close with. I've lost them. I just lost one the other day. It's become a lot more than I bargained for initially.

Kate M.
His project has grown in scope- really, really grown.

Thomas Fife
I thought I would have this little book about Waldo, and now I've got a 750-page tome.

Kate M.
In fact, this "little book" has now become a two-volume set focusing on the men of the American Field Service: Section Three.

In this next part of the episode, I'm going to share just a glimpse of the incredible stories I heard from Thomas. We'll hear about four volunteers- Alwyn, James, Kenneth, and Richard- and within their experiences, we'll encounter a German nanny, a hunt for a cairn, two tragic deaths, a connection to Psycho, a helpful Frenchman named Daniel, and much more.

[Transition music]

Kate M.
To start, a story from

Thomas Fife
The very first descendant that I ever met.

Kate M.
A woman whose father, Alwyn Inness-Brown, was a member of the Field Service and then joined the US Army as an officer. As she recounts the story to Thomas…

[Piano music]

Thomas Fife
On November the 11th, on Armistice Day, the day that the war ended... he met a German soldier out in no man's land. The war is over, and everybody's coming up out of their trenches, and they're mingling.

Kate M.
Imagine a quiet scene, after years of so much noise. Soldiers from opposite sides, cautiously coming out of their trenches, a strange mix of relief and maybe even curiosity in the air.

Thomas Fife
And for whatever reason, they struck up a conversation, and the German exchanged addresses with Inness-Brown.

Kate M.
Eventually, everyone went home. Years passed, and then...

Thomas Fife
He gets a letter from this German soldier.

Kate M.
A letter arrived at his South Carolina home, all the way from Germany. Inside was a big request: this man and his wife wanted to move to the United States. Easier said than done, as a sponsorship or some proof of support was usually needed for people wanting to immigrate to the United States. This German reached out to the man who he had just briefly met, years back.

Thomas Fife
And so Inness-Brown agreed to sponsor this German and his wife to come to the United States and work for them. So the German soldier became like the butler, chauffeur, and the wife became the cook, maid. And so all she was telling me, his daughter was telling me, they grew up with this German nanny, and they would, she would march them, “eins, zwei, drei!” And cook them all this German food. And it all came from this chance meeting in no man's land on November the 11th. And I just thought, how crazy.

Kate M.
How crazy, indeed. That chance encounter on the day the war stopped led to a whole new life for this German couple in America. Alwyn Inness-Brown didn't have to engage in that conversation, and he certainly didn't have to offer sponsorship years later. But he did. Thomas found that connections from the war continue to shape families in unexpected ways, and the real reach these brief moments can have.

Kate M.
In Thomas's deep dive into the records into the American Field Service and Section Three, some names popped up repeatedly- figures who, in their own right, went on to some level of fame. For example, maybe you were already familiar with the painter Waldo Peirce, before ten minutes ago. And then there's another name that might ring a bell…

Thomas Fife
Are you, like, have you ever seen the movie Psycho? It's Hitchcock's, you know, one of these classic, timeless movies, Psycho. Well the, you know, the villain, you know, the murderer, Norman, was played by a young actor named Anthony Perkins. And his dad was in Section Three.

Kate M.
Yes, Anthony Perkins' father, James Osgood Perkins. After his time as an ambulance driver…

Thomas Fife
He becomes an actor, and was pretty successful in Hollywood. His career was actually starting to to thrive and but unfortunately, he died of a heart attack. But prior to his death, he and his wife had, they had given birth to their one and only child, which they named Anthony.

Kate M.
Anthony Perkins found success on Broadway and in Hollywood across various genres. However, he's undeniably most famous for his chilling portrayal of the serial killer Norman Bates in the Psycho franchise. Finding the next branch on this particular family tree wasn't exactly a mystery, given the family's public profile.

Thomas FIfe
Again,  I'm ultimately looking for a descendant.

Kate M.
However, reaching out wasn't straightforward. Anthony Perkins had passed away in 1992 due to complications from AIDS.

Thomas Fife
So I go after his descendant family.

Kate M.
Anthony Perkins was same-sex relationships for most of his life, but he did marry a woman, actress, model, and photographer Berry Berenson, and father two children with her. But when Thomas thought about reaching out to Berry…

Thomas Fife
I'm reading and his wife, Anthony's wife, was on the first plane to crash into the World Trade Tower on 9/11. So I’m like wow…

Kate M.
Ironically, one of the most recognizable names connected to the Field Service proved to be one of the most challenging descendant trails to navigate. But Thomas's dedication to uncovering the human stories of Section Three pressed on.

Thomas Fife
So I was fortunate enough to find one of Anthony Perkins’ sons, a guy named Elvis Perkins. Great name. He's a musician out in LA.

Kate M.
So, the story of James Osgood Perkins in Section Three brings a famous name into our narrative, a story marked by both celebrity and tragedy. Yet, Thomas's continued research also shone a light on the lives of those far less known.

Kate M.
Throughout Thomas's research, certain figures kept reappearing. But then he'd occasionally find a name he'd never seen before, almost a ghost in the historical record. In the book The History of the American Field Service 1920-1955 by Albert George Rock, the prologue was penned by J. Paulding Brown of Section Three. In this prologue, he mentioned some forgotten WWI drivers. That's where Thomas spotted a new name that piqued his interest.

So early, early days, of World War I, Harold White, the Director of European Sales for the Ford Motor Company in Paris donated ten Model Ts to the American Ambulance Service. He also loaned them some drivers. These drivers weren’t just Americans. They were from Denmark, England, Sweden. And at this point in the story, the drivers are still attached to the American Hospital in Paris.

Thomas Fife
This one gentleman, this guy named Fowler.

Kate M.
Kenneth R. Fowler, from England, was one of those early drivers. He was living with his family in Paris at the time,

Thomas Fife
He was in the British equivalent of the National Guard, and he had not been called up yet. He was concerned that the war was going to end before he got called up.

Kate M.
He wanted to contribute to the war effort, even if it wasn’t part of the British Army.

Thomas Fife
This early, early driver, he helped evacuate the very first wounded from the battlefield at the Marne.

Kate M.
But then after just 2 months with the American Ambulance Service…

Thomas Fife
Well, he got his wish, and in November, he was recalled back to England.

Kate M.
Fowler was in England for about 6 months for training.

Thomas Fife
And then he comes back to France in April with his regiment, and he was killed by a sniper on the very first day up on the front line.

Thomas Fife
So again, one of these guys who just appears as sort of a footnote in the story.

Kate M.
Thomas's digging paid off; he found Fowler's family. They provided photos and they had backstory: Fowler was living in Paris because his father had founded one of the first car insurance companies in the city.

Thomas Fife
Even though, you know, this guy's been dead since 1915 but the family still his name still resonates.

Kate M.
And these descendants shared an incredible story with Thomas. About 25 years later, during World War II, Fowler's parents were still in France when the Germans took over Paris. Those living in occupied France had to provide for these German soldiers – food, fuel, even lodging. Apparently, one day a German officer knocked on the Fowler's door...

Thomas Fife
Fowler’s mother was still so heartbroken about the loss of her son, and they explained that he had been killed in the Great War to the German officer, and the German officer saluted and gave condolences, and went and found accommodations someplace else.

Kate M.
It's a story passed down through generations, and I really want to believe it. That even despite the widespread animosity between Nazi Germany and occupied France, individual moments of humanity like that could still occur.

Thomas Fife
The Fowler families scattered all over the world. And I think I emailed somebody that lives in New Zealand, but they shared with me photos. And so suddenly, this name now is a three dimensional person. I got photos of Fowler at a fancy dress party, dressed up in drag, you know, with his mom and his sister. You know, they're all grinning.
And so again, these people. I tried to make these people as human, as possibly, as I possibly could, because I was just curious. You never know. That was one of the things. When you find these people, you have no idea.

Kate M.
Much more than just a footnote in a World War II book, the story of Kenneth Fowler reminds us of the individual experiences within the larger historical narrative.
The final volunteer whose story I will be sharing has been a key figure for Thomas during this whole journey. If you recall, at the beginning of the episode we were on a hunt for a cairn… let’s get back there.

Kate M.
As Thomas kept digging into the stories of those early AFS drivers, the story of Richard Hall really stood out. A member of Section Three, he became the first AFS driver to lose his life in World War I. Thomas's research really brings to light the heartbreaking way he died and the profound impact it had on the other men of Section Three.

Thomas Fife
Richard Hall was the first American Field Service driver to lose his life in World War I. He was killed on Christmas Day, Christmas morning, about one o'clock in the morning.

Kate M.
Early Christmas morning, 1915. While many were at a Christmas Eve mass or sharing a meal with family, a young American volunteer in the French region of Alsace was driving on a dark road.

Thomas Fife
He was alone. He was on a stretch of road where he was alone.
He was on his way back up to an aid station from the valley floor, the little village that the field hospital was that they were servicing is a little village called Moosch, and so he had come down hours earlier with a load of wounded. The Germans were shelling the valley. He was struck by a German artillery shell. The impact of the detonation knocked his ambulance off the road.  And that section of the road there was a ravine to the left, and so his ambulance tumbled down that ravine out of sight.

Kate M.
In the chaos of wartime, with attacks ongoing...

Thomas Fife
I'm sure that several guys drove past him not realizing he was down there.

Kate M.
Hours later two other volunteer drivers, Robert Matter and Allyn Jennings, were heading back up to the aid station.

Thomas Fife
But I guess Matter, just for whatever reason had happened, to glance over his shoulder, and saw a wreck, saw something enough to cause him to stop. And when they went down there, they found Richard's body.

Kate M.
On December the 27th, Richard was buried in a small military cemetery right in Moosch, where he still lies today. But for the men of Section Three, a formal burial wasn't the only way to honor their fallen comrade. A few days later…

Thomas Fife
They went to the site where Richard was struck down, and they began to erect a marker, a cairn out of dry, stacked stones. They took some wood and planks from his ambulance to make a cross to put on top of the stone marker. Within a week or so of the creation of this memorial Section Three was transferred out of Alsace. And so Section Three never returned to the area.

Kate M.
It became a powerful symbol of their shared experience and a real way to honor his memory. And it was documented in photographs, letters, and even a sketch by the artist Waldo Pierce.
Yet, as the years passed, the cairn seemed to fade from memory.
 
Thomas Fife
But nobody ever mentions this, the cairn. So, you know, I'm like, I wonder if that thing's still up there on the side of the road, overgrown with weeds and forgotten.

Kate M.
For Thomas, finding the location of Richard's death was crucial for his research.

Thomas Fife
Because, again, I'm trying to nail down in my book the specific time frame of, you know when he left, the last person to see him, and again, just so I understand much more accuracy when he was killed. And if we could find that cairn that would give us an idea of how far up the mountain he was.

Kate M.
Thomas's historical detective work led him to Daniel Bastien, a retired General of the French Air Force and a former diplomat, who grew up in the very region where Richard lost his life.

Thomas Fife
Daniel's been great, because I could, I could send him, he goes, Oh, yeah, that's such and such a place. And he's actually gone out and even taken modern photos, the same camera angle for me.

Kate M.
Daniel, familiar with the local landscape, recognized the general area from Thomas's descriptions and old photographs. But the exact location of a century-old, unmarked stone pile? That would be a true challenge.

Thomas Fife
So I told Daniel, and Daniel enlisted the aid of some friends, and they went up there and went looking.

Kate M.
Daniel and his friends, armed with Thomas's faded photos and perhaps a tattered map, ventured into the countryside.

Thomas Fife
I don't know if the road even exists anymore. I don't know if it isn't overgrown. Was it paved and expanded? Did they bulldoze the cairn away, not knowing what it was? I mean, who knows? It's been 100, whatever, years.

Kate M.
The landscape had undoubtedly changed. The chances of finding this small, forgotten memorial seemed slim.

Thomas Fife
So they went up there, and long story short.

Kate M.
Against all odds.

Thomas Fife
They found it, they found it.

Kate M.
But it wasn't the intact cairn from the old photographs.

Thomas Fife
It probably tumbled over at some point. A lot of the rocks have been carried away. But it’s there.

Kate M.
After more than a century, the remnants of the cairn still exist, a testament to the enduring memory of Richard Hall and the bonds forged between those early AFS drivers.
Thinking about where we started, a trunk Thomas purchased from a dealer in Ohio. A trunk with artifacts belonging to volunteer driver Louis Gilger. Then the purchase of Waldo Peirce’s effects, and the photo album, the one which really drove Thomas’s passion to learn more. Now, years later, that passion has become a quest to enshrine the legacies of these volunteers.

Thomas Fife
So I want to go. I've studied Alsace for the last 10 years. I've never been there. I can close my eyes and drive the roads, you know. But to actually be there, I mean, it would be a dream of a lifetime.

Kate M.
And remarkably, there's an effort underway to rebuild this very cairn, with a dedication ceremony planned in France this coming September. Thomas will be there, joined by members of Richard Hall's family and descendants of other AFS drivers.

[Music]

Kate M.
Why is it important to preserve the past?

Thomas Fife
Well, because that's our past. It's our roots, it's our foundation.

Kate M.
When you’re young…

Thomas Fife
...you're living in the moment, or you're living for the future. And then I think when you get to a certain point in your life, you realize that you're not going to live forever. You've seen remarkable things, were done, remarkable things, and you get the idea that there's a continuity that needs to be maintained, so that the young people coming up have a sense of their forebears, what they went through, sacrifices.

Kate M.
And Thomas is actively building that continuity. This book isn't just leaving a legacy for him and his family; as we've heard, it's forging lasting connections with these volunteers' families, sharing and preserving their stories.

Thomas Fife
And one of the families pointed this out to me, and it really. I never thought about it this way, and it resonated with me. She pointed out. She said, you know, your book is going to become part of our archives. Your book will be passed down with this, these documents, hopefully to the succeeding generations, so that, you know, long after we're gone.

Kate M.
It's remarkable to consider that Thomas, who hasn’t even studied abroad, or hosted, or volunteered with AFS, the very program this podcast explores, has become such a vital link to its early history. The impact of AFS began long before student exchanges, touching lives in unexpected ways – like a historian in Georgia buying a trunk in Ohio and embarking on a global journey to honor these long-gone volunteers.

A big, big thanks to Thomas Fife, historian and author of the upcoming book, The Harvard Section: The History of American Field Service Section Three. You can learn more about it at harvardsection.com.

Kate M.
Thank you for listening to The AFS Exchange! We have a lot of exciting stories coming up for this 5th season, including many interviews with hosted students, host families, and returnees. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode! Send a message to podcast@afsusa.org. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and be sure to subscribe. To learn more about AFS-USA and international exchange, visit afsusa.org. 
  
This podcast was created by Kate Mulvihill. Social media by Julie Ball and Nina Gaulin.