URBANA — Some of the stories brought smiles, others caused tears to well. But all the recollections at a Veterans Day event Friday had the intended effect: to remember, respect and revere those who have served their country.

"Does anybody remember leg-do?" Phil Bloomer asked the 200 or so audience members at Clark-Lindsey Village in Urbana on Friday afternoon.

Several women raised their hands, smiling as they recalled the leg makeup they used instead of wearing nylons as part of the rationing that controlled their lives during World War II.

Bloomer and Greg Kline, former reporters for The News-Gazette, and News-Gazette online editor Mike Howie, were on hand to talk about "When We Went to War," a book just released by The News-Gazette.

The book is a compilation of stories written in 1994 by Kline and Bloomer for the 50th anniversary of D-Day in Europe. The co-authors' work, compiled by Howie, was based on hundreds of interviews that they and other staff reporters did with men and women who served in the military and those who supported the war at home.

Because pictures from the 1994 publication weren't available, Howie said, he had the "joy" of sitting in living rooms listening to stories as he scanned photos to use in the book onto his computer.

The pictures he obtained for the book cover depict two groups of men, average age about 20. One group is posed on a battleship; the other is in front of a B-24 bomber. Like Bloomer and Kline, Howie said he was struck by how so many men didn't regard their service as remarkable.

"They just went. This is something that had to be done and they did it. You can debate the definition of hero, but those guys are heroes as far as I'm concerned," Howie said.

Bloomer, now spokesman for U.S. Rep. Tim Johnson, wrote the stories about life on the home front. He said he was aware from his own parents' experiences of many of those, including life in the tar-paper shacks west of Memorial Stadium that were filled with families whose fathers attended the University of Illinois on the GI Bill.

But he said it wasn't until he talked to his parents' contemporaries that he "got a real, palpable sense of the universal sacrifice and unity for this war. It's nothing like we've seen since."

"When Pearl Harbor happened, the world changed for all of us in ways we could never know," he said.

Kline, whose work focused on the men who served in battle, said he was interested in getting the stories of "people you don't find in the history books, the common men and women who did their service and rarely talked about it."

Both men said that while they were overwhelmed with information, it was a great professional experience to be relieved of their daily assignments for six months to work on the special D-Day project, the brainchild of now-News-Gazette Publisher John Foreman and former city editor Mary Sharp.

Kline, who is now a writer at Purdue University, recalled sitting in awe as the late Chanute Air Force Base commander, Gen. Frank Elliott, described being trained to fly a B-24 bomber in about a month at the tender age of 19.

"I remember thinking I shouldn't have been allowed to drive a car at that age," Kline said.

Elizabeth Rogers, 92, a resident of Clark-Lindsey, and James Karr, 89, of Seymour were in the audience. Both went on the Oct. 18 Honor Flight to Washington and were sharing their war stories even before the program began.

Karr, a farmer, served in the European Theater in the Army and lost hearing in one ear from a battlefield explosion in France. Rogers, a retired UI chemistry instructor, served in the Red Cross for two years supervising "a doughnut dugout" in France.

While Karr was drafted, Rogers said she willingly went overseas to get a taste of the world.

"It was a great experience, very broadening," said the mother of five, adding she would absolutely do it again if she had her life to live over.

The pair said they're still going through the scores of letters presented to them as part of their Honor Flight experience and said they were overwhelmed by the warm homecoming they received at Willard Airport.

"It was far greater than what we got when we got home (after WWII)," Karr said.

Elaine Hall, another Clark-Lindsey resident who played patriotic songs on the piano for Friday's event, said Bloomer's recollection of the tar-paper shacks struck a chord with her and husband, Bill Hall, a veteran of the Merchant Marine, Coast Guard and Navy who served in the Pacific.

"We lived in Illini Village, south of what is now Illini Grove on Lincoln," Hall said of her tiny home from 1949-1952 that featured a potbellied stove for cooking. "We just loved it. All the other grad students were in the same boat."

USS Indianapolis survivor Don McCall, 86, of Champaign was also present with his shipmate and fellow survivor, Art Leenerman, 87, of Mahomet.

The two are veterans of telling their harrowing tale of surviving about five days in the shark-infested waters of the South Pacific after their ship was sunk by Japanese torpedoes, unknown to anyone because of the secrecy of its mission of having delivered components for the atomic bomb.

McCall said recent appearances at Provena Covenant Medical Center and at Holy Cross School got him thinking about a Catholic priest who died in the water.

"Father Tom Conway. If anyone deserves a medal of honor, it's him," said McCall, who was 18 when he was drafted into the Navy and 20 when he got out. In between, he participated in eight major battles in the Pacific.

Aboard ship, McCall said, Conway was a favorite of Catholics and non-Catholics alike. As the men died in the open seas, Conway swam from man to man offering comfort and the last rites before succumbing himself.

"He was just a wonderful person," McCall said.

The book When We Went to War is available at The News-Gazette, 15 Main St., C, and online at the newspaper's website.