Warmamas is a project about a special group of mothers. They are the mothers of soldiers who serve - or have served - in our military in a time of war. The majority of these soldiers have been deployed to the Middle East and Southwest Asia. Most have returned home. Some have not. This project attempts to provide the mothers of these soldiers a public platform on which to tell their own stories, each narrative as unique as it is universal.
Oral History Voices
Warmamas has collaborated with StoryCorps in 2014 and 2015 in collecting the stories of military veterans and their families through StoryCorps’ Military Voices Initiative. The recordings are preserved and accessible on the Warmamas' website, the University of Miami's special collection archive - StoryCorps/Warmamas Community Archive - as well as the Veteran's History Project at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
The Warmamas’ mothers-only interviews are also preserved and accessible on the Warmamas’ website as well as in the StoryCorps-Warmamas Community Archive in Special Collections at the University of Miami’s Otto Richter Library.
The StoryCorps-Warmamas Community Archives at the University of Miami is a collection of Warmamas' video interviews with women whose children have served in the military during a time of war, most of them deployed to serve in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. As a repository for personal reflections of mothers on the ramifications of war, the collection provides opportunities for individual testimony and helps to document a crucial moment in American history. In addition, audio recordings of voices of veterans and/or family members, conducted in collaboration with StoryCorps' Military Voices Initiative and Warmamas in 2014 and 2015 are also housed at the Special Collections department of the Otto G. Richter Library, where they will be preserved and remain accessible for personal and academic research.
The interviews are open and available to the general public. Beatrice Colastin Skokan, Manuscript, Archives & Outreach Librarian
​
In addition to the veteran and family recordings, a series of random 2013 audio street recordings compiled by Tim Carpenter in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is included and accessible on the Warmamas’ website and UM’s special repository as well as the audio interview of Sylvie Lubow, National Director of the Military Voices Initiative, recorded in August 2015, NYC.
​
