More than 500 men from New Mexico ended up as casualties of World War I. In the War’s aftermath, the New Mexico Board of Historical Services launched an initiative to memorialize those fallen men, culminating in a memory gathering project and archive.
During the years immediately following World War I, Lansing Bloom was hired at the Museum of New Mexico charged with directing the Museum’s War History Service. In this capacity, he was responsible for compiling the biographical records and information about New Mexico’s 16,000 World War I veterans. Toward this end, Bloom conducted a survey of surviving WWI veterans of NM. Approximately seventy-percent of the surveys were returned and are housed today at the New Mexico State Archives in Santa Fe,…