Birmingham photographer Jeffrey Rease, who created the Portraits of Honor website to showcase pictures of World War II veterans, continued to make amazing progress in 2022 as he tracked down living veterans.
As December started, Rease was returning from Vancouver, British Columbia, where he met Mozart Mimms, 104, an African-American from Kentucky who moved to Canada after his service as a U.S. soldier in World War II.
Most of the veterans he takes pictures of are in their 90s, some older than 100. As of Veterans Day in 2021, he had taken portraits of 217 World War II veterans. Approaching the end of 2022, Rease said that he was at about 310 veterans photographed.
He went to Normandy, France in June for the anniversary of D-Day, with about 29 veterans. “It was awesome being on Omaha Beach with all those veterans,” he said.
When he first started the photography project, he thought it would be veterans living in Alabama. “I thought it would just be local,” he said.
But word has continued spread. He was featured on NBC Nightly News in August. “It blew up again,” he said. “I got over 600 emails from around the country. I’m trying to pick and choose where I can go and when.”
Some friends of Mimms offered to fly him from Alabama to Canada to meet Mimms.
“It’s been beyond meaningful, absolutely amazing,” Rease said. “I’ve traveled with the Best Defense Foundation, taking veterans back to battlefields. It’s just been phenomenal.”
Since he started in April 2019 with a portrait of Marine Colonel Carl Cooper of Vestavia Hills, dozens of the portrait subjects have died. That has brought even more urgency to the project.
“It’s going strong,” he said. “There have been so many wonderful veterans to meet and hearing their stories that continually amaze me.”
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