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CATHY: A lot of people have been comparing our fight against coronavirus to a war, a war against an invisible enemy. It's a striking comparison, particularly as we think about the army of healthcare workers on the front lines. One person in our newsroom here at MPR who's been thinking a lot about this is one of our photographers, Evan Frost. Before this crisis began, he had started collecting portraits and stories from Minnesota veterans of World War Two. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the end of that conflict. Evan joins me right now to talk about the project and reflect on what he has learned. Evan, congratulations. Nice project.

EVAN FROST: Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

CATHY: What's the inspiration behind the project? You were just starting this out. I heard a little bit about it. I thought, what a great idea. But what was the spark for it?

EVAN FROST: Well, like you said, this year marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War Two. And as of last year, there are 400,000 World War Two vets still with us. And I read that two years from now, there could be less than half of that. So I really see these people as living primary sources of the most significant historical event of the last century and just really wanted to get to know them better and capture what their experience living today is.

CATHY: You are an excellent photographer and I just got to see some of the photos that you've been shooting. When you do a portrait series like this, it's a big deal. It's no small endeavor. So for those who don't know, tell us what's involved with this.

EVAN FROST: Well, basically, I've been setting up a photo studio in their living room or assisted living facility and I bring in an 8 foot backdrop, two big lights, a camera, a tripod, a couple of microphones, and it takes me quite a few trips back and forth from the car and kind of a long time to set this up. So I sit down and do an interview, talk to them for an hour or so, and then we do a couple portraits.

CATHY: All right. So let's talk about some of the individuals that you've had the opportunity to profile. The first of the portraits is on our website today.

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: This can be recorded. My name is Daniel Cylkowski.

EVAN FROST: Tell me about Dan.

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: I'm a veteran of World War Two.

EVAN FROST: Well, he graduated in 1943, right in the middle of the war. He was born and raised in East St. Paul with two brothers and a sister, and his father was a veteran of World War One.

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: And shortly after I graduated, a couple of weeks after, I was drafted into the United States Army.

CATHY: Was he fearful about going to war?

EVAN FROST: It's kind of the opposite. He was worried that he wouldn't actually get in. As a kid, he loved to sing and loved big band music. He would sit really close to the family's radio with his ear right against the speaker.

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: So I'll go real close to the radio, up against there.

EVAN FROST: And his sister would tell him--

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: Dan.

EVAN FROST: Dan, you're not going to get accepted into the army.

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: You're not going to have hearings.

EVAN FROST: Because you won't be able to hear anything.

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: So then I start-- when they're coming closer, when I knew they're going to be calling me, I thought, I better start praying. So I was praying, believe it or not, every night pray, Lord, please.

EVAN FROST: In the end, it turned out OK and the doctors cleared him to go into the army.

CATHY: And then he stood off to the frontlines then in, what, 1943?

EVAN FROST: Yep, 1943. He fought all over Europe in a field artillery unit and as general infantry as part of General Patton's Third Army. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge, rounded up prisoners of war, took cover from German bombs and saw Nazi concentration camps. He told me one story in particular that stuck with me during a battle near Normandy.

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: Well, that night they came.

EVAN FROST: He was sitting in his foxhole when all of a sudden he looked up and he saw German flares just kind of lighting up the night sky.

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: They were so bright and were so bright you could hardly could live and look at them.

EVAN FROST: So he looked out just long enough to see German bombers start flying overhead.

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: I looked like, oh my God. And I can just see it's blinding, it's bomb. And the noise was so bad.

EVAN FROST: When he was laying in his foxhole, they were instructed to scream and yell as bombs fell on them in order to protect their hearing. So he was laying there, crushing a crucifix and a rosary in his hand as he screamed and yelled, prayers.

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: Lord, please save me. And I promised the Lord, if you get me through this, I promise you, every day before I go to bed, I will make a special prayer to you, which I did because I was really scared.

CATHY: Wow. Wow.

EVAN FROST: It just really sounded like a haunting experience.

CATHY: So, Evan, what was your reflection talking with him about all this?

EVAN FROST: I think the thing that struck me most talking to Dan and really all the veterans I've interviewed, is just the clarity of their belief in what they were doing. I wanted to pose questions. And when I was thinking of this project, I was going to come in and I was going to ask, what did this mean to you, and why did you fight in the war? And I was expecting these kind of philosophical answers. But what I got was really straightforward. It was that this was their duty to the country and to the world. You believed in what you were doing and you did what was right.

CATHY: When Dan looks at the world today and how much everything has changed, did he have anything to say about any hopes or reflections for the current generation?

EVAN FROST: Well, I asked him this exact question, and it was a hard one. He got a little choked up and he said that he really hopes that we just stick together and can stay united as a country.

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: Part of bother me when I see these young kids.

EVAN FROST: It makes him upset when he sees people kneeling for the national anthem or disrespecting the flag.

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: When I see what they're doing for the Pledge of Allegiance, you have no idea what it does to me.

EVAN FROST: Because he really saw firsthand the sacrifices generation made.

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: I choke up.

EVAN FROST: And the way the country came together to preserve these rights that we have to speak freely.

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: Who gave you that speech? Who fought for that? You look at the cemeteries there, you see all those boys there, 18, 19-year-old boys.

EVAN FROST: And I think he just really hopes that my generation and younger people understand the sacrifice that was made.

CATHY: Wow. Tell us, how did he make it back home?

EVAN FROST: Well, after victory was declared in Europe, the army actually took all of his warm clothes and told him he was going to the Pacific. But luckily before he could be deployed, the war was over. The US had dropped two atomic bombs in Japan.

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: Now, the war ended in May in Europe. I didn't come home till January.

EVAN FROST: He spent another seven months in Europe because they didn't have enough ships to get everyone home right away.

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: So they're going around to different people, what kind of talents you have?

EVAN FROST: And the army needed some way to keep all the soldiers entertained.

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: Well, they saw that I loved to sing.

EVAN FROST: So they recruited him for the Glee Club.

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: The troops were so restless. They had to find a place to do something because these guys are going wild there.

EVAN FROST: He toured around Europe, singing to his fellow soldiers.

DANIEL CYLKOWSKI: All the popular songs. Jingle, Jangle, Jingle. I got spurs that jingle, jangle, or Don't Fence Me In.

EVAN FROST: It brought him closer to his fellow soldiers and just kind of capped a really grueling experience.

[KAY KYSER, "JINGLE, JANGLE, JINGLE"] I got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle. As I go riding merrily along. And they sing--

CATHY: I'm so glad you got to meet him, Evan. Thank you so much.

EVAN FROST: Yeah, thank you, Cathy.

[KAY KYSER, "JINGLE, JANGLE, JINGLE"] Oh, Lillie Belle. Oh, Lillie Belle. Though I may have done some fooling, this is why I never fell. I got--

CATHY: That's our photographer, Evan Frost. You can find his World War Two portraits on our website. And I tell you, they're beautiful. Mprnews.org. And we should note that Evan stopped doing these portrait sessions with veterans since the COVID-19 crisis began, which makes the stories he was able to collect that much more important to us now.