Passing It On

Tidying up for the new year

It’s time to clean out the office in anticipation of a productive and prosperous 2008. Here are a few items of interest for your consideration.

Are you familiar with the Willard Suitcase Project? This fascinating project began when the Willard Psychiatric Center in New York was closed in 1995 after 126 years. Left behind in a pigeon-infested attic were nearly 400 suitcases, dusty testaments to long-forgotten former residents of the facility that began as the Willard Asylum in 1869.

In the years since, researchers have examined the contents of the suitcases and have pieced together the stories of their faceless owners. The result is a traveling public exhibit, “The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic,” which will be at the New York City Public Library through Jan. 31. A book by the same title will be available in January.

People do the darnedest things to their data. To learn about the guy who sprayed his hard drive with insect repellant or the woman who took her flash drive for a tumble with her laundry, check this out.

Hopefully this won’t happen to you, but some people have taken to selling family heirlooms to pay off their medical bills. Descendants of abolitionist John Brown found themselves in this predicament recently.

Many newspapers charge for obituaries these days. That’s the downside; the upside is that you have more control over what you can say since it’s essentially a paid ad. But, if you want to avoid bad word choices, like “gone to live with the angles,” or factual errors such as “Grandma was a descendant of [the childless] George and Martha Washington,” you might want to hire a pro. Here’s an article on the perils of paid obituaries.

Oh, to be a farmer. Chris over at The Genealogue reports that a study by Drs. Leonid and Natalia Gavrilova of Chicago shows that trim farmers with more than three children were more likely to live to see 100 than overweight city boys without kids. In fact, living on a farm "more than doubled a man's odds of living into the triple digits."

Larry Lehmer is founder and president of When Words Matter, a company that specializes in collecting stories and writing family stories. Check out his web site or send him an e-mail.

Flickr photo courtesy of otbergo.

Time to make your own Top 10 lists

My morning paper had a list of Roger Ebert’s Top 10 movies of 2007. There were also three similar lists from other movie critics.

It’s that time of year. There are lists of just about everything: best new restaurants in town, top news stories of the year, goofiest news stories of the year. The turning of a new year is always a time for reflecting on the events of the past year and projecting our hopes for the year ahead.

Now is a good time to make your own personal history lists for 2007. Pick a few topics and start writing. Write about big events in your life, memorable people you’ve met, trips you’ve taken, things you’ve done that brought a smile to your face. Make some promises for 2008, too. If you’ve been thinking about that family history project for awhile, vow to make it happen in 2008.

For those who may want assistance in completing a family history project, we have a list of our own, called “The Top 10 reasons why When Words Matter should write your history.” Feel free to share this list or a link to this blog with anyone you know who may be interested in finally putting their plans for creating a family history into motion. The list:
    1. We are experienced, skilled professionals.
    2. We will help connect you to your ancestors and descendants through your life stories.
    3. When you hire us, it will get done, within your budget and on time.
    4. We treat every conversation with you as private and confidential.
    5. Our writing is clear and concise and presented in an engaging style.
    6. We will work closely with you to ensure that the final product fulfills your expectations.
    7. Most people spend at least six years to write their biographies. We can finish your project in a fraction of that time.
    8. Family members are often more open with strangers, especially a skilled interviewer.
    9. We provide the motivation, structure and encouragement to complete your project.
    10. We will take facts of your life and turn them into a valued document that will preserve forever your unique life.

Larry Lehmer is founder and president of When Words Matter, a company that specializes in collecting stories and writing family stories. Check out his web site or send him an e-mail.

Flickr photo courtesy of Emo Squid.

The building's gone but the memories remain

Quite a few buildings of my youth are gone. Some of them are long-gone.

Franklin School, my elementary school in Council Bluffs, Iowa, is among them. In its place, a newer building carrying the same name has risen across the street from the school I remember, with its stunted gym, creaky floors and second-floor fire escape where Mr. Coziahr, the building custodian, swept the leftovers of a day of hard learning and recesses fluttering to a gravelly grave.

Gone, too, is Twin City Bowl, where I whiled away many an hour of my teen years, some of them working, many more preparing for my never-realized goal of professional pin stardom. I did, however, learn the ins and outs of handicapping horse races, every intimate detail in the life cycle of a bottle of beer, how to grill a mean cheeseburger, the embarrassing and hostile consequences of installing belts backwards on Brunswick automatic pinsetters, the potency of industrial chemicals and the wisdom of accepting only cash in payment for services rendered at a failing business enterprise.

Sad as these losses are to me, the people of Iowa suffered a greater loss this week when Breitbach’s Country Dining was leveled by fire on Monday morning. Located in the small hamlet of Balltown, Iowa, Breitbach’s was touted as Iowa’s oldest restaurant, dating back to the stagecoach days of 1852.

I’ve eaten at Breitbach’s three or four times over the years and each visit was a treat. While I found the lunch buffet food to be pretty ordinary, it was known for its homemade soups and Mile High Lemon Pie. The dining area was crammed with antiques and collectibles and each trip through the buffet line reminded me of a pot luck. I loved that.

True to its name, Balltown has a ballfield located east of the restaurant, high on a bluff that overlooks the picturesque Mississippi River valley north of Dubuque. It’s among the most scenic drives in the state.

Remembering what has been lost in our lifetimes is often an overlooked part of our histories. Without our witness, we could be depriving our heirs of vital information available nowhere else.

Larry Lehmer is founder and president of When Words Matter, a company that specializes in collecting stories and writing family stories. Check out his web site or send him an e-mail.

Flickr photo of Breitbach's Country Dining in 2000 courtesy of ISU_79.

From Angela to me to you: A meme for the holidays

Blogging friend Angela Maiers has tagged me with one of those memes that are so popular in the blogosphere. Thanks, Angela, for giving me the opportunity to offer Passing It On readers this bonus Christmas post.

The meme rules passed on by Angela are:

• Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
• Share 7 random and or weird things about yourself.
• Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.

The first of the 7 random facts is especially for Angela, an accomplished runner:
     1. Although I am probably the only runner in Iowa high school history to have gotten lost in a cross country meet, I have started two marathons and finished one.
    2. I was a DJ for a short time on my college radio station.
    3. I once buried a dishwasher in my back yard.
    4. I'm a published poet.
    5. I played intramural basketball against Marlin Briscoe, who went on to become the first black quarterback to start in the NFL before earning two Super Bowl rings with the Miami Dolphins and almost beat then-NBA rookie Scott Wedman in a game of HORSE.
    6. I once turned down a Peace Corps assignment to Jamaica.
    7. I spent a glorious afternoon in a bowling alley bar with rockabilly pioneer Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash's mother-in-law, Mother Maybelle Carter of the famed Carter Family.

Enough about me. It's time to hear about these seven friends:

• Jenni at AJA
• Stefani at Legacy Multimedia
• Elizabeth at Gift Idea Help
• Steve at Family Legacy Video
• Peggy at Peggy Payne's Boldness
• Michael at Insight Advertising
• Timothy at Carpe Factum

Happy holidays to all!

Dog person or cat person? Can’t we just get along?

When I was a very young child, I owned a dog. His name was Skippy, but I barely remember him.

I remember him as sort of a lanky creature, light-colored and spotted, but I could be wrong. To the best of my knowledge, Skippy never lived in our house but chose instead to hang out at my grandparents’ house, some four blocks away. So fond of Skippy was my grandfather, that he may have actually been Grandpa’s dog. Isn’t it pathetic that I don’t remember more? Especially since I consider myself a “dog person” (as opposed to a “cat person”).

On the other hand, I have many fond memories of Rusty, the family dog during my teenage years. And of Bud, the psychologically and physically fragile Shih Tzu half-breed that landed on our stoop, shivering and whimpering, in the midst of a nasty late-spring Midwest ice storm. My parents claim that the first story I wrote, way back in kindergarten or first grade, was titled “The Go-Away Dog.” (Skippy may have been the inspiration for that forgettable effort).

Through the years I’ve also been the tragically unsuccessful caretaker of fancy mice and goldfish, but dogs have long been the pet of choice in my immediately family. Both of my brothers have owned dogs, but I believe this particular branch of the family tree is dog-free these days.

Frankly, I’d never thought that cats measured up to dogs as family pets. Have you ever tried to teach a cat to roll over? Have you ever tried to teach a cat anything? My own children don’t share this view.

My oldest son, Aaron, and his wife, Eiko, share their Berkeley living space with two cats and my daughter, Meghan, recently added a Siamese cat to her household, which also includes a puppy. That’s my wife, Linda, playing with Meghan’s dog in the photo.

Regardless of the breed of pet, I believe they add richness to just about any family situation. Remember to include relationships to pets as you write your own memoirs or family histories.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian at When Words Matter. He can help you write your own family history. To learn more, check out his web site or send him an e-mail.

Photo of Lucky Lehmer by lwlehmer.

Here a candidate, there a candidate, aaargh!

Politics. Particularly presidential politics. Bah, humbug.

Here in Iowa, with its first in the nation caucus status, presidential candidates are seemingly everywhere and that’s enough to bring out the Scrooge in anyone who has a fondness for Christmases past.

Selecting a president is serious business, but the selection process is in drastic need of overhauling. Scarcely a day goes by when I’m not invited to an event to cheer on one candidate or another. Even more ubiquitous are the endless phone calls from pollsters and robotic messages from celebrity supporters or local political luminaries. My daily mail includes as many political flyers as legitimate holiday greetings these days.

These unwelcome, unsolicited and annoying interruptions are the byproduct of a system that places an unwarranted emphasis on the amount of money raised, fake “debates” and a dizzying array of polls. These have become the criteria by which we measure our candidates these days, with real positions on real issues obscured by campaign spin machines, self-anointed pundits and obtuse analysis by a mainstream media caught in the backwash of a muddied tide largely of their own making.

It hasn’t always been this way, of course. Former Speaker of the House Thomas "Tip" O'Neill once famously declared that, "All politics is local." His point was that locally elected officials play at least as significant a role in the lives of an individual as those representatives sent off packing to Washington. While presidential politics rule the airwaves now, expect local races to heat up next year in advance of the 2008 general election.

How has politics impacted your family history? Do you have any current or former elected officials in your family tree? Do you vote along the same party line as your parents? Have you lived in a mixed political household, where family member supported different parties? How did that play out in your family dynamics? Has any politician had a profound or direct impact on your life or the life of another family member?

Understanding the role that politics has played in your family could give you additional insight into how your family functioned.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian and founder of When Words Matter. He helps people preserve their histories through their family stories. To learn more, check out his web site or send him an e-mail.

Flickr photo courtesy of LateNightTV.

Is it really "your" family history?

Who “owns” your family history?

On the surface, that may appear to be a dumb question since the answer is so obvious. You do, of course. Are you sure? An article in today’s paper raises a few questions.

The article was written by Charles Davis, who deals with Freedom of Information issues at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. His article outlines the squabble over presidential records.

In the wake of the Watergate scandal, the Presidential Records Act of 1978 asserted that the U.S. Government is to assume complete “ownership, possession, and control” of all presidential and vice-presidential records with the National Archivist taking control when the president’s term ends. After a 12-year embargo, most become accessible to the public.

But President Bush issued an executive order in November 2001, nullifying the act and giving former presidents and their assignees the perpetual right to deny release of any presidential papers of their choosing. In the years since, legislators have been working on an amendment to restore the act, a movement that’s currently stalled in the Senate due to objections by Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning.

Under Bush’s executive order, he alone will decide which presidential papers may be used in crafting the history of his reign. That’s appalling to advocates of the free flow of information generated by organizations funded by public dollars for the common good.

But isn’t that how most family histories are done? Doesn’t the author act as a final gatekeeper, deciding what gets in and what doesn’t? Is there truly a “free flow of information” in the research stage, or are some things ignored or glossed over? Would other family members recognize or accept your version of events in a family history?

These are all valid questions you should be asking as you work on yours. Are you recording the unvarnished truth or are you employing a more selective process? Remember, future generations will look to your work from the same perspective you look at your ancestors. Don’t let them down.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his When Words Matter web site or send him an e-mail.

Flickr photo courtesy of M@.

How has technology affected your family history?

When my maternal grandparents wed and headed to America in 1920, it was a huge leap of faith that they would find whatever it was that they were seeking and apparently couldn’t find in their native Denmark.

Sadly, I’ll never know precisely what it was that they were seeking, but they must have found it. They never spoke of any misgivings to me, and they remained here the rest of their lives.

While the cultural and social changes they went through in their lifetimes were huge, indeed, they shared in the major technological shifts that engulfed this country as well. They arrived two years before commercial radio was available in America, but by the time my grandfather died more than six decades later, he was fond of listening to Danish radio on his shortwave radio, often singing along to the music of his youth and sometimes taping his sessions, a decision his descendants are eternally grateful for.

He truly appreciated the new and wondrous technologies his adopted country afforded him, an appreciation that is sometimes overlooked in our fast-moving modern age.

I was reminded of this over Thanksgiving as I filled my fanny pack for a trip to celebrate the holiday with relatives in Omaha. The fanny pack itself is decidedly low-tech, something I picked up for free at an Iowa State Fair a few years ago. But consider what fits inside the pouch that is barely noticeable (to me) when I wear it. In the picture with this post, these items are (from left):
    • A digital camera (actually, a photo of a digital camera since the actual camera was in service at the time), capable of storing more than 400 high-quality color images.
    • My 80G iPod Classic, capable of storing up to 20,000 songs, or roughly 1,600 vinyl LPs.
    • My cell phone that keeps me connected to the world, including my sons in England and California, whom I can call from just about anywhere, and for far less cost than I could call someone 20 miles away 40 years ago.
    • My digital recorder, which is cable of recording several hours at the flip of a switch.

I’ve acquired each of these things in the past year and newer versions of each are already available. Many of us take these things for granted, but changes in technology also affect how families behave and interact with each other. Take this into account when you preserve your own family histories.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or send him an e-mail.

Who the ---- cares? You might be surprised.

One of the most common excuses I hear from people for not wanting to do their own family’s history is that nobody else cares.

In the case of Oscar Berliner, it was more like “Who the hell cares?”

Oscar, the crusty father of filmmaker Alan Berliner, persistently rebuffed his son’s attempts to document his father’s life. “What does it matter” … “I don’t care about the family tree.” These were what the elder Berliner told his just-as-persistent son in the 1996 documentary “Nobody’s Business.”

“I’m just an ordinary guy who’s lived an ordinary life. I went into the army, got married, raised a family, worked hard, had my own business. That’s all.”

This father-son clash that is at the heart of this fine film is all too familiar. That makes the findings of a recent survey by Ancestry.com all the more interesting.

The survey found that 83 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds are interested in learning their family history. That’s more than the 35 to 54-year-olds (77 percent) or the 55-plus group (73 percent).

Remember that during this holiday season. When a young family member asks you about your family history, give them what they want even though you may not share their enthusiasm. It’s literally the gift of a lifetime.

You can check out Alan Berliner’s touching eulogy to his father and learn more about his films here.

Speaking of the holidays, there’s a meme floating around with a theme similar to a Christmas advent card. There’s a prompt a day for collecting Christmas memories. Check it out here.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. If you’d like to know more, check out his web site or send him an e-mail.

Flickr photo courtesy of  coda.

Iowa family works to preserve unique legacy

Ruth Donaghy was an amazing woman.

Born in a farmhouse near Alleman, Iowa, in 1912, the youngest of 13 children, Donaghy never married. Yet, except for the seven years she worked as a housekeeper in Des Moines, she lived out her life on the farm where she was born. For many of those years, she cared for the never-married three brothers and sister who lived with her.

Since 1981, though, it was just Ruth. “I’m not going to leave this house,” she told her great-nephew Tom Cory, according to a story this week in the Des Moines Register.

Register staff writer Gunnar Olson wrote, “As she hoped, Donaghy took her last breath Nov. 6 in the bedroom in which she took her first.” She was 95 years old.

It’s exceedingly rare that an American stays in one house for their entire life. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the average American moves 10 times in a lifetime.

Cory, who owns the Donaghy farm, is determined to keep the farm in the family. That’s not easy in Iowa, where 60 percent of its farms have disappeared since 1930. An Iowa State University study in 2005 showed that only one-third of Iowa’s farmers had identified a successor.

For Cory, the temptation to sell will probably be great. Suburban sprawl is rapidly approaching the farmstead from two directions. But, for now, Cory plans to move his son's family into the farmhouse and he'll start sorting through his great-aunt’s possessions, including several paintings she did after taking up the hobby at age 60. He plans to give the possessions to various family members.

“Maybe they can start building a connection to what this Donaghy family is all about,” Cory told Olson.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. If you’d like to know more, check out his web site or send him an e-mail.

Flickr photo of rural farmhouse courtesy of  Zama Ree Do.