Program date: September 26, 2025
Air date: September 29, 2025
From the City Club of Eugene:
You never know what you will find when cleaning out your parents’ house. What you find may change the direction of your life.
In October 1944, Dr. David Wilsey left his wife Emily and their infant son to serve in France with the 116th Evacuation Hospital. Dr. Wilsey was a brilliant anesthetist and a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha honorary medical society. He was among the first doctors to provide medical care for the liberated survivors at the Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany. While serving there and elsewhere in Germany, Dr. Wilsey wrote more than 300 letters to his wife, documenting his often-horrific experiences treating patients who had been tortured and starved by the Nazis. As one letter said, “Dachau change lots of things that you will have to just see for yourself.” His prophesy proved true; when he returned, he was a changed man, unable to share in person the stories of his experiences.
Clarice Wilsey, his daughter, was born after World War II. In 2009, while clearing out the family home, she found the box of her father’s letters. With these letters as a primary resource, she writes of Dachau, war, and the heroic man she never knew. It is a story of great courage in the face of cruelty and how the wounds of experiencing the aftermath of such atrocities may never heal. Dee Simon, executive director of the Holocaust Center for Humanity in Seattle, writes, “Wilsey shares with startling openness the deepest thoughts of a man plunged into one of the world’s most horrific crimes. She reflects on this crucial history as a daughter raised in the shadow of trauma.”
In this program, Bob Welch discusses the process of writing a memoir with Ms. Wilsey and the lessons he learned from this process. We must prevent this from happening again—anywhere.
Speaker:
Bob Welch is a columnist for Lookout Eugene-Springfield and author of a Substack column, Heart, Humor & Hope. He has authored a plethora of books, including “Cross Purposes: One Believer’s Struggle to Reconcile the Peace of Christ with the Rage of the Far Right.” Bob spent 25 years as a writer, editor, and columnist for The Register-Guard in Eugene, Oregon, where he twice won top honors in the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. A former professor of journalism at the University of Oregon and founder of the Beachside Writers Workshop, Bob has cultivated a way with words that reaches the hearts of readers from all walks of life.
About the City Club of Eugene:
The mission of the City Club of Eugene is to build community vision through open inquiry. The Club explores a wide range of significant local, state, and national issues and helps to formulate new approaches and solutions to problems. Membership is open to all, and Club members have a direct influence on public policy by discussing issues of concern with elected officials and other policy makers. The City Club’s mailing address is PO Box 12084, Eugene, OR 97440, and its website is cityclubofeugene.org.
Video and Broadcast
This program will be live streamed, and the videotape will be made available on the City Club of Eugene’s Facebook page and You Tube Channel, in addition to our website. It will be broadcast on Monday, September 29, at 7:00 p.m., on KLCC 89.7 FM.
Contact: For more information, visit CityClubOfEugene.org.