V.I. Documentary Team Recevies 3 Telly Awards for ‘Proudly We Served’

Roberta Knowles, left receives a gold trophy from Joan Keenan for her work on 'Proudly We Served.' (Photo by Elisa McKay)
Roberta Knowles, left receives a gold trophy from Joan Keenan for her work on ‘Proudly We Served.’ (Photo by Elisa McKay)

The production team of “Proudly We Served: Virgin Islands Veterans of the Korean War,” gathered Sept. 10 to present Telly Awards won by the documentary produced on behalf of the American Legion District 10.

The documentary won: gold for non-broadcast craft writing, bronze for non-broadcast craft editing, and bronze for non-broadcast general low-budget under $700 per minute.

The film was selected out of more than 12,000 entries from all 50 states and five continents. Producer of the film Joan Keenan said, “We are proud and delighted to receive these awards.”

Founded in 1979, the Telly Awards honors video and television made for all screens and is judged by The Telly Award Judging Council; a group of leading video and television experts from some of the most prestigious companies in entertainment, publishing, advertising, and emerging technology.

The 30-minute video is the third installment in the “Proudly We Served” series. It vividly explores what motivated Virgin Islanders to serve in the Korean War, 1950-1953, their contributions to the war effort, and the effect military service had on their lives.

In late 2007, the American Legion District 10 of the U.S. Virgin Islands authorized a volunteer video production team to produce the documentary, “Proudly We Served: Virgin Islands Veterans of World War II.” This was the continuation of a project initiated a few years earlier to collect and preserve the stories of Virgin Islands veterans for inclusion into the Library of Congress Veterans Project.

PWS Team - The Proudly We Served team, from left, Jean Picou, Steven Richards, Joan Keenan, Brian O'Reilly. (Submitted photo)
PWS Team – The Proudly We Served team, from left, Jean Picou, Steven Richards, Joan Keenan, Brian O’Reilly. (Submitted photo)

The Proudly We Served team continued the mission in 2013, reaching out to more than 25 Virgin Islands veterans, which led to the second installment, “Proudly We Served: Virgin Islands Veterans of the Vietnam War.”

The production team is producer/director Keenan; Jean Picou, editor/director; Steven Richards, narrator; Brian O’Reilly, interviewer; and Roberta Knowles, writer/researcher.

At a celebratory lunch on Sept. 10, producer/director Keenan presented two Telly awards – one plaque for a third-place bronze (2010) and one plaque and a statuette for a first-place gold award (2019) for writing the voice-over scripts – to Roberta Knowles, professor emerita of the University of the Virgin Islands. The awards were announced in May in New York.

In attendance at the Sept. 10 event on St. Croix were Richard Schrader, author and Korean War veteran; Alscess Lewis-Brown, editor of the “Caribbean Writer” and adjunct professor of UVI; and Elisa McKay, artist, freelance writer, and former educator.

Other members of the production team met at the Beachside Cafe on Aug. 18 to receive their awards.

More information about the documentary is available at the “Proudly We Served website.