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A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Elizabeth Mullener received a bachelor of arts degree in art history from George Washington University in Washington, DC, in 1964. Since 1979, she has been a reporter on the city desk at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, where she writes news features on the people and events in her adopted city. She lives with her husband in Uptown New Orleans.
When she was assigned to write an article in 1989 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first day of World War II, she thought she would have to update her passport to obtain first person accounts. Much to her surprise, she found three people living in New Orleans who were in Poland on the day Hitler invaded. "It was kind of a thrilling experience," Mullener said. "I felt like I was looking history in the face. I thought maybe I would keep going, commemorating some more of the 50th anniversaries of the war as they rolled around." And she did. Over the next six years, she wrote many stories for the newspaper about local people who saw some of the major events of the war. "About halfway through, it became obvious it was a good idea for a book. After that, my husband kept after me until I got it done."
In June 2002, Louisiana State University Press published War Stories: Remembering World War II, Mullener's collection of fifty-three personal testimonies about virtually every major event of the war. An unusually intimate history, War Stories illuminates the Second World War in a way no mere accumulation of facts can. Mullener said she "hopes this book conveys that war, like all other events, no matter how huge or how cataclysmic, takes place one person at a time."
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