Preserving Veteran Stories at Siouxland Freedom Park

Ideum partnered with Siouxland Freedom Park, South Sioux City, NE, to create a powerful new digital experience that preserves the personal stories of American veterans. Unveiled on Veterans Day, November 11, 2025, the Veteran Interview Station debuted inside the Bud & Doris Day Interpretive Center as part of the Park’s ongoing commitment to honoring regional service members. During the opening ceremony, Park President Mike Newhouse reflected on the importance of the project, saying, “This is a dream come true,” emphasizing the urgency of capturing these stories while veterans are still here to tell them.

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Self-Recorded Interview Station 

The interview station was designed as a self-serve environment where veterans can sit down in private, reflect, and record their experiences in their own words. Built around Ideum’s 34-inch 5K Reader Rail Kiosk, the system provides a crisp, ultra-high resolution interface that makes the recording process approachable and easy to navigate. Veterans follow a guided sequence of   18 interview questions, and the software automatically segments each answer into individual clips, tags them with metadata, and stores them in an expanding archive. Museum staff noted how important this simplicity was; as Melissa Lanzourakis explained, “We really wanted to make it a great experience for the veteran and not be intimidated by the technology sitting before them.”

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To ensure high-quality recordings in a public museum setting, the installation incorporates a custom microphone system engineered specifically for this project. The mic setup provides exceptionally clean voice capture, reduces ambient noise, and adapts to veterans who prefer to sit or stand. The station also includes subtle lighting and acoustic treatments to make the recording process feel comfortable and respectful. This technical foundation supports what Newhouse described as the deeper mission: “The tragedy of many veteran experiences is that we don’t preserve them. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.”

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From Recording to Gallery: A Living Exhibit

Once recorded, the stories become immediately accessible to visitors through a companion viewer application in the gallery. A 55” touch display allows guests to browse interviews by question, service era, branch, name, or topic, turning the collected testimonies into a living exhibit. As the archive grows, Siouxland Freedom Park plans to integrate the recordings into its website so families and researchers can access them remotely. The result is an evolving digital collection that captures not just historical events but personal insight, emotion, and lived memory. As local veteran John Ludwick shared during the opening, “Every combat veteran… there isn’t a day that goes by that you see the war.” His words underscore why preserving these stories is essential, and why making the process accessible through thoughtful design matters.

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The Veteran Interview Station enhances Siouxland Freedom Park’s mission by bringing a human voice into a landscape defined by memorials and reflection. By combining meaningful interpretive intent with custom hardware and software, Ideum helped build a platform that will continue to grow for generations. Its launch on Veterans Day not only honored those who served but also established a permanent, living archive of local military history, expanding each time a veteran steps forward to share their story.

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