A.R.A. Sponsor Directory
Our sponsor directory is a listing of individuals, businesses and organizations who rely on access to historical records, research services or the patronage of our members to carry out their missions.
Please show your support for our sustaining members by giving them your business or supporting their cause!
Thank you A.R.A. Sponsors!
WWII Ranger Archive of West Virginia
Not-for-profit
Our mission is to collect and preserve artifacts and information about men of the six Army Ranger battalions of the Second World War.
National Organization of Veterans' Advocates, Inc.
Not-for-profit
The National Organization of Veterans’ Advocates, Inc. (NOVA) is a not-for-profit educational membership organization incorporated in the District of Columbia in 1993. NOVA represents nearly 650 attorneys and agents assisting tens of thousands of our nation’s military veterans, their widows, and their families seeking to obtain their earned benefits from VA. Through training, advocacy, and support, NOVA works to develop and encourage high standards of service and representation for all persons seeking VA benefits.
WW2 Rangers Descendants Group
Not-for-profit
The mission of the WW2 Rangers Descendants Group is to provide a platform where the descendants of WW2 Rangers can use records and media to educate and learn about the combat participation, service history, sacrifice and overall wartime contributions made by their fathers, uncles, grandfathers who served as part of Ranger units during the war. The WW2 Descendants of Rangers Facebook Group consists of about 1,100 members both sharing and seeking information on their military veterans. Please visit their site if you have photos, records, or information that could add to the stories of the veterans who served as rangers during WW2. “Rangers lead the way!”
Association of Media Content Users & Providers
Not-for-profit
The Association of Media Content Users & Providers is a trade organization established to celebrate the ever-growing spectrums of both media content production and the widening variety of multimedia platforms by merging together the professional communities of Content Users (researchers, clearance professionals, writers, directors, producers, editors and attorneys) and Content Providers (those who shoot, find, collect, archive, license and distribute), embracing all involved in the creation of third-party materials – television and film clips, photographs and music elements – as well as those who acquire them and include them in analog and digital platforms
Donna Esposito
Author/Historian
Donna Esposito is a researcher, author and historian. She earned an undergraduate degree in molecular biology from Lehigh University and a doctoral degree in genetics from Cornell University. She spent five weeks in Papua New Guinea in 2018 and has visited the Solomon Islands twice, participating in the recovery of remains from an MIA soldier and attending the Guadalcanal 75th Anniversary commemoration events in August 2017. Donna has previously served as director of the library and archives at the Empire State Aerosciences Museum in Glenville, NY and as a historian with the nonprofit organization Pacific Wrecks. In addition to her personal writing and research projects, she volunteers as a writer and researcher for the South Pacific World War II Museum on Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu and as a researcher for Sealark Exploration.
Operation Benjamin
Not-For-Profit
Most people don’t know that hundreds of Jewish-American GIs killed-in-action in WWII were mistakenly buried under Latin Crosses. And there they have remained for 75 years. Until now.
The mission of Operation Benjamin is to identify Jewish soldiers at American military cemeteries all over the world who were mistakenly buried under Latin Crosses and replace the headstones with a Star of David. This allows for accurate and just recognition of the soldier’s identity, provides comfort to the families of the fallen, and enables the millions of visitors to the American military cemeteries to visually understand and appreciate the shared Jewish sacrifice in the causes of democracy and freedom.
Dimitris Vassilopoulos
Author/Researcher
Mr. Vassilopoulos is a military historian, author and the purveyor of ‘Greeks in Foreign Cockpits’, a website dedicated to telling the stories of pilots of Greek descent who have flown combat missions from WWI through the modern era. The Team at GFC have researched and documented the service history dozens of pilots, ensuring that the memory of their sacrifices and bravery will not be forgotten.
Veterans Legacy Foundation
Not-For-Profit
The Veterans’ Legacy Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in North Carolina, servicing veterans and their families by providing historical research. The significance of this research provides deceased veterans’ families a means to discover what a relative did during their military service, and veterans a process to have their documents corrected. Often times, we find that veterans have been awarded decorations, but their accomplishments are not reflected on their discharge papers.VLF’s founders consists of a handful of veterans, who are passionate about the work they do for other veterans and veteran families.
Bill Cosgrove
Military Historian
Bill’s father served with the American Field Service in India and Burma with General Slim’s 14th British Army where he received the British “Burma Star” Campaign medal. Bill’s father in law was an artillery officer in Patton’s 3rd Army, XII Corps with the 945th Field Artillery Battalion. Since 2013 he has been a regular presenter on a variety of WW2 topics at UGA’s OLLI adult education program and the Toccoa Veterans Breakfast where he was honored to present his talk on “The Battle of the LaFiere Causeway” on the 75th Anniversary of D-Day. He is a volunteer with the Witness to War program and the author of “Time on Target: the 945th Field Artillery Battalion in World War Two”. He also enjoys helping families research their Dad’s WW2 experiences. Bill’s website is dedicated to the 945th FAB and contains pdf copies of
his book, the original Daily Journal, marked topo maps from the battalion Hq, and other original documents – www.timeontarget.us.
Roberta Russo
Military Historian
Roberta is a 35th Infantry Division Association historian, member of the American World War II Association Historians Consortium, and webmaster of an online archive of historical records related to the 35th Infantry Division. Since the website’s inception more than 15 years ago, a large volume of documents obtained from the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Personnel Records Center, and numerous state archives and libraries have been digitalized, indexed and added. It also includes photographs and soldier’s stories submitted by veterans, their families and friends. The purpose of the website is to preserve the history of the 35th Infantry Division and its veterans and to serve as a resource for military historians and genealogists.
Professor Amy Harris
Scholar/Author
Amy Harris is an associate professor of history and family/history genealogy. Her research interests center on families, women, and gender in early modern Britain. She is particularly interested in the way family and social relationships inform one another. She uses both her historical and genealogical training to study family relationships of the past. Prof. Harris has completed fellowships at the Center for 17th and 18th-Century Studies at UCLA’s William Andrews Clark Library and the Newberry Library in Chicago. She teaches European history, introductory genealogical methods, English paleography, advanced British genealogical methodology courses, and women’s studies. She currently serves as the director for the Family History Program at BYU.
Brigid Burt
Writer/editor
Brigid is still unpacking the family suitcase of letters and mementos from her grandfather’s service in World War II. She has relied on the National Archives to uncover his death in Normandy. Every piece of information she finds is one step closer to allow his story to be told. She graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelor of Arts in English. She is the youngest of seven children and has a fraternal twin sister. She credits her father for encouraging her to pursue this research area. In her free time, she likes to run and finished the 2019 Bank of America Chicago Marathon in 3:56:19.
Emerson Insignia
Reference/Militaria
William K. Emerson has has researched, written about, and collected US Army insignia for over 40 years. He retired from the army with 20 years of service including two tours in Vietnam. Emerson Insignia provides some information and links related to U.S. Army insignia – their history, illustrations, references and data that may be useful for researchers and collectors.
Witness to War Foundation
Not-for-Profit
Witness to War is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the firsthand memories of combat veterans through video interviews. Witness to War strives to PRESERVE the stories for the veterans and future generations, HONOR the service of veterans by sharing their stories on our website, and EDUCATE the general public on the sacrifices made to ensure our freedoms.
Researcher: Jeffrey DeWitt
Veteran Advocate
Jeffrey DeWitt is a 26-year United States Air Force veteran who retired in the rank of Chief Master Sergeant, the top 1% of all enlisted grades. He is a life member of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars. He has served various positions at the post and district level and was named a National Aide-de-Camp of the Veterans of Foreign Wars for 2019-2020. Born and raised in Norwalk, Connecticut, he has researched countless veterans and their stories, focusing on those who died during wartime service. He holds Masters degrees in Administration from Central Michigan University and Business Administration from the University of Bridgeport.
Norwalk, CT Heroes
Not-for-Profit
Mission: To honor veterans from Norwalk, Connecticut who made the ultimate sacrifice during wartime service. Norwalk Heroes features the stories of veterans who served from the Revolutionary War through the modern era. The primary focus of Norwalk Heroes is on documenting the service and sacrifice of those who died in the service. Norwalk Heroes was founded by Jeffrey DeWitt, a veteran advocate, researcher and storyteller who is himself a veteran.
Ghost Army Legacy Project
not-for-profit
The Ghost Army Legacy Project seeks to preserve and honor the legacy of the WWII deception troops that used inflatable tanks, sound effects, and imagination to fool the Germans on the battlefields of Europe. The unsung heroes of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops (in northern Europe) and the 3133rd Signal Company Special (in Italy) saved thousands of lives and helped win the war, but their efforts were kept secret for fifty years and have yet to be officially recognized. We are working to make sure these men and what they did is not forgotten.
Author: Jon Gawne
Author/Historian
Jonathan Gawne is a military historian specializing in the U.S. Army from 1910-1945. He is the author of “Finding Your Father’s War”, “Spearheading D-day,” and “Ghosts of the ETO,” as well as many other books and articles. He has consulted on films, museums, events and all manner of military history events.
Mulberry Street Market Intelligence
Marketing Firm
Mulberry Street Market Intel provides full-service, integrated marketing, public relations, and market research services to businesses and organizations across industries. Mulberry Street works directly with members of the archival research industry to maintain access to vital records that serve the interests of the public, as well as individual families, veterans, and their descendants.
Author: Bill Beigel
Author/Historian
Bill Beigel is an American military records researcher, speaker, and author specializing in service histories of American veterans and casualties of World War II. Since 1999, Mr. Beigel has researched thousands of WWII veterans and casualties for individuals, families, private and public organizations worldwide.
He is the author of “Buried on the Battlefield – Not My Boy: The Return of the Dead from World War Two,” which has been optioned for a documentary film. He is building the world’s first complete online database of the 407,000 American military casualties from World War II, which presently includes more than 100,000 names. For more information, please visit http://ww2research.com.
Author: Darren Neely
Author/Historian
Using official archive sources at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., smaller governmental facilities across the country, collections at libraries of all sizes and from the families of the photographers themselves, we strive to show the war through images and official unit reports. The images these highly trained cameramen who captured during the war were the official records of the Army during the war and our goal is to showcase as many of them as possible. Visit Mr. Neely’s website to learn more about his books and research.
Author: Bill Warnock
Author/Historian
Lincoln Archives Digital Project
Not-for Profit
The first and only project digitizing the federal records of the Lincoln Administration. All executive, legislative, judicial and military records! If you want to truly understand Lincoln as President, you have to see the BIG picture!
LEGACY:
Lost and Found
Not-For-ProFit
LEGACY: LOST AND FOUND is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization which is dedicated to battlefield relic return and research. LEGACY researches and identifies who owned the item and their story, reunites their sacred relics with the veteran or family, educates the family, students and the public about the veteran’s story and sacrifice. We also assist European grave adopters with learning about their assigned KIA soldier.