John and Marie Renza watch the presentation about their wartime experience during one of the multimedia presentations about Bryant University alumni during World War II. The letters were selected from more than 1,400 that were found stored in a basement at the university. The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

SMITHFIELD -- For everything John Renza told the students researching his life as a serviceman during World War II, he said he was more surprised about the things he didn’t tell them that made it into the presentations that were unveiled to the Bryant University community Thursday.

“How they got all of that history is beyond me,” he said. “There were things I was surprised to see because we never talked about. I don’t know where they got all the information from, but it was all true.”

About 150 students, faculty and alumni gathered in the Stepan Grand Hall for “Bryant Goes to War 1941-1945,” a series of presentations sparked by a cache of letters written by students and alumni who served in World War II who wrote back to Bryant during their deployment.

The letters were selected from more than 1,400 found stored in a basement at the university. The letters are addressed to the Bryant Service Club, a student organization formed in 1942 to support service members, to thank them for letters, candy, cigarettes and knitted items the soldiers received as gifts from the club.

This semester, eight students conducted an independent study guided by history professor Judy Barrett Litoff to delve into the stories contained in the letters and find out a little more about the lives of the authors, both during and since the war.

When the letters were first discovered, Barrett Litoff, a longtime researcher of World War II correspondence, helped the librarians catalogue all of the letters and cross-checked the authors with the university alumni center, to see if any of the former students were still in the area.

People like Mary Fournier, 86, were more than happy to participate, though she said she was surprised to be contacted.

“I didn’t think it was as big a deal as they did,” Fournier said. “I remember working hard and encouraging students to donate their time and effort.”

Fournier (then Walsh) was a sophomore at Bryant College when she became co-chair of the letter-writing committee of the Bryant Service Club. She’s there, smiling in the second row, in a photo of the Service Club featured on the program from Thursday’s presentations.

“Those were the happiest years of my life,” she said as she sat in a sea of college students, all waiting for the presentations to begin. “I loved those four years I was there. I made wonderful friends.”

Initially, Barrett Litoff was scheduled to present her research on the letters at the National Social Science Association annual conference earlier this month in Las Vegas. But with the formation of the class and the findings they’d discovered, she thought it would be more interesting to have the students present. The five presentations went so well, the students asked to present their findings when they got back to the campus.

Football coach Marty Fine allowed two of his players, Julien Dumont and Kurt Spear, to miss portions of spring training in order to present in Las Vegas and members of the football team turned out en masse on Thursday to support their teammates.

“It was a wonderful opportunity,” Fine said to the audience before the presentations. “This is a wonderful institution where you can combine academics at a great level and play a little athletics along the way.”

For students like Will Stanley, who studied the war experiences of alumnus Wesley Crawley, the project was an eye-opener. “I got a sense of appreciation of how important it is to understand what they went through,” he said. “It’s an awesome inspiration to see what they overcame.”

For the alumni featured in the presentations, such as John Renza, who taught at Bryant after he returned from war, the project was a nice nod back to the college he and his friends used to know, some he hadn’t seen for 60 years.

“It’s pleasant to think they remembered us after all these years,” he said. “It’s a great way to be memorialized.”

tbuford@projo.com