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IF YOU LISTEN WHAT: Oral histories of the South Portland shipyards WHERE: WMPG (90.9 FM and 104.1 FM) WHEN: From May 21-25, one episode a day at 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. A LEGACY OF SHIPS AS MAINE CELEBRATES 400 years of shipbuilding, learn more about the state's shipbuilding culture and history in our online special section at www.pressherald.com/shipbuilding. Also listen to Mark Thompson, executive director of the Portland Harbor Museum, talk about the harbor museum's new exhibit.

YOU ARE INVITED TO SHARE YOUR STORIES about Maine shipbuilding from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Maine Maritime Museum, 243 Washington St. in Bath. Newspaper staff members will be available to record your stories and scan your documents and pictures. For more information, please call 791-6450. For directions to the museum, consult www.bathmaine.com.

The broadcast is the result of interviews conducted as part of Portland Harbor Museum's Homefront Veterans Oral History Project. Cape Elizabeth High School students, under the guidance of WMPG-FM, conducted the interviews in the spring of 2006.

One 10-minute episode will be played twice daily on weekdays next week, at 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Each episode is devoted to a different aspect of shipyard life, said Portland Harbor Museum curator Hadley Schmoyer, who served as project director.

Even though the shipyards operated for a only few years, from 1941 to 1945, Schmoyer said she was struck by the effect the yards had on the workers.

One episode deals with the high wages shipyard employees received. "Many of the men and women who worked there were able to send their kids to school or buy homes," Schmoyer said, "things they may not have been able to do otherwise."

Another piece focuses on the women who worked in the yards. "For many of these women, it was the only two or three years of their lives that they worked," Schmoyer said. "Really, after that, they went back to being mothers or wives."

Other themes include work conditions and the differences between the east and west yards.

With help from WMPG-FM producer Stephanie Philbrick, Cape Elizabeth students interviewed about 35 people, speaking with workers and others whose lives were touched by the shipyards, including a shipyard cafeteria worker and a South Portland police officer.

"The feedback was really wonderful," Schmoyer said. "So many students remarked how they would remember this more than anything they would remember in their textbooks."

Oral history, Schmoyer said, "really empowers all of us to record our own histories and understand that every day we're alive we are part of history."

Shipyard workers "may have felt like all they were doing was feeding their family and learning a skill," she said, "but really, they were part of history."

For Schmoyer, the project shows the importance of collecting such stories before they are lost.

Some of those interviewed have died since the episodes first aired in December 2006, Schmoyer said, adding, "Their important histories would have been lost if Cape Elizabeth students hadn't sat down with them and preserved their stories."

News Assistant Isaac Kestenbaum can be contacted at 791-6308 or at:

ikestenbaum@pressherald.com.