Loyet Collection Now Available in Online Archive

   The Madison County Historical Society is pleased to announce a new photography collection available in the Society’s Online Archive. The collection consists of 439 slides taken by Wilbur Henry Loyet during his service in the Korean War and subsequent time as a Peace Corps volunteer.

  Loyet was born in 1927 in Granite City. He volunteered for the Navy during WWII, less than a month after he turned 18. During the Korean War, he was a second lieutenant in the Air Force.

   This was when he began taking slides and sending them home to his parents, along with audiotaped “letters.”

   Loyet returned to civilian life in 1956. By 1964, he was a nontraditional 37-year-old student at SIU Carbondale and had signed up with the Peace Corps. Loyet documented his time as a volunteer in Ghana with additional slides and audiotapes.

   Loyet’s slides have now been digitized and cataloged thanks to a project that was supported in part by an award from the Illinois State Historical Records Advisory Board, through funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, National Archives and Records Administration.

   Those interested can view the Loyet collection slides from this page on the MCHS website: https://madcohistory.org/archival-library/archival-library-resources/

   The Society plans to apply for another grant to digitize and transcribe the audiotape “letters” which will provide additional information about the slides.

   For further information about the collection call 618-656-7569