Passing It On

The upside of a lousy winter: We have stories to share

Jeesh, what a winter! No matter where you live, I’m certain your family will have some weather stories to add to your family history.

You may have heard similar stories from your parents or grandparents – tales of walking miles in the snow to school, dodging tornadoes or hurricanes, slipping past landslides, cleaning up after floods, frying eggs on sidewalks or picking up hailstones the size of softballs. Family lore is often chockfull of weather-related stories.

For my family, I’m certain none of us will forget that December day that our two sons had complicated and difficult flights from opposite coasts in a mad dash to get to Des Moines for one last trip to Omaha to see their hospice-bound grandmother. Nor will we forget the harrowing drive in the worst storm of the season (so far) to spend 40 minutes with Grandma and celebrate their own mother’s birthday with a small cake in a tiny hospice room.

I’ll contribute a few other weather stories to the family archives, like the floods of 1993 that ironically left us without water for a week and forced my employer, The Des Moines Register, to set up a temporary newsroom in the suburbs and deliver printing plates by small plane to a sister paper 100 miles away so that we could produce and deliver the next day’s paper on time, less than 24 hours after the disaster struck.

Or of the times when my wife and I would escape the 100-degree-plus heat of our then-Central California home by driving a mere 50-60 miles west to Bodega Bay, where the Pacific Ocean waters were too cold to comfortably wade in and the temperature would be some 50 degrees cooler. Or our winter trips just above the snowline of the Sierra to make a snowball or two before turning around and escaping the white stuff.

However you choose to save your family’s weather stories, keep in mind another fact – these stories often change over time. You might want to save some proof for future generations.

Writing prompt for the day: What are your favorite weather-related family stories?

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

Photo: Bret Lehmer and his dog, Buster, survey the snow near their Maryland home. (B.D. Lehmer collection).

You don’t need to be a pro to interview your relatives

In the past 15 months, two important members of my family have died – my mother and my mother-in-law. While I will always wish I had collected more family history from them while they were alive, I am glad I got what I did in recent years.

Through formal interviews and casual conversations, I managed to collect quite a few interesting stories from them, particularly from my mother. Losing a close family member is painful under any circumstances, but the pain is compounded when a person’s wisdom and life stories die with them.

Collecting the stories from another person’s life is a daunting task for many people. There are plenty of perceived obstacles, but few of any real substance. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to be a professional to conduct an interview. And the notion that someone doesn’t want to be interviewed is wrong in 99 percent of the cases I’ve seen. Once you clear these hurdles, the rest is within the grasp of anyone who’s read this far.

Here are some tips to get you started:

Dealing with reluctant subjects. The key here is to be persistent and to find a topic that your subject is interested in. If you keep stressing the importance to you and promise to talk about only what your subject is willing to share, they’ll almost always comply. Once you get someone talking, the stories usually flow freely.

Go gently. Start by talking about something your subject is interested in. Be conversational, not confrontational. You don’t want to antagonize your subject. Listen and pay attention to body language so you can steer the conversation to productive areas for both of you.

Ask good questions. Read my earlier post on this subject. Don’t ask questions that accept simple yes or no responses. Make your subject think and respond with stories instead.

Don’t wear out your welcome. I like to keep my interviews short, usually around 40-45 minutes. This is especially important with older people whose energy starts flagging fairly quickly. End your interview on a high note and with a promise to talk again soon. Don’t let too much time lapse between interviews.

Writing prompt for the day: Make a list of family members you want to interview and create a plan to do it.

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

Flickr photo courtesy of 2bpatchett.

Five We Like: Another week of family history goodies

There’s a lot of good family history information available on the Internet. Here are five places we’ve enjoyed visiting recently:

The Dash. You may have heard of Linda Ellis’ poem but have you read it? Or seen the video? After you’ve done that, move on to the next item in this list.

Taking Them from Names to People. Miles Meyer of Jacksonville, Florida, fills in the dash of his great grandfather in this post.

Do You Talk About Your Family History at Home? Complete with a clip from the popular Desperate Housewives television show, this article shows the value of informative dinner table family discussions.

Enduring murder mystery: Was justice too swift? By Virginia N. Sherry of the State Island Advance, a look back at a 95-year-old murder case that raises questions about justice and the privileged class.

Cheerful Money. New Yorker staffer Tad Friend pens a lively memoir about the decline of the colonial WASP culture that helped create the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Oh yes, that includes his family.

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

Flickr photo courtesy of faster panda kill kill.

Black History Month: It’s not just for black people

February is Black History Month. Many libraries, museums and historical groups across the country are offering special programs this month. Check them out.

African Americans have a unique spot in this nation’s history. The relatively straightforward act of putting together a family tree is a near-impossible task for those whose ancestry includes slaves in 19th-century America. Many people believe that the United States is still dealing with the aftermath of that stain on our republic.

I grew up as a white person in a community that was roughly 97 percent white in the 1950s and 1960s. I knew a few black people, but none well enough to call a friend. While I will never understand first-hand what it was like to grow up black in those turbulent times, I find occasions like Black History Month a great time to learn.

Two of my favorite all-time places to visit involve black history. One is the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City. Started in 1990, the museum is reported to be in financial trouble, but its exhibits are worth a special trip. It’s located in a black historical district at 18th & Vine and is just a few blocks from Arthur Bryant’s famous rib joint and where Kansas City’s old baseball park once stood.

The other place is the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. The museum itself is in the remains of the old Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King was shot and killed in 1968. The museum’s engaging multimedia exhibits are incredibly detailed and educational without being stuffy or preachy. An added bonus is that the motel’s exterior is preserved as it was in 1968, as is the rooming house across the street, from where the fatal shot was fired.

As you might expect, there are plenty of good sites about black history on the Internet. Here are links to a few of them:

• CNN report on the Greensboro sit-in that is credited with starting the modern civil rights movement.
• Biography.com
• BlackHistory.com
• History.com

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

Flickr photo courtesy of firepile.

Athletes Warner, Blake are good models for planning a legacy

The first question I ask people in my role as a legacy planner is “How do you want to be remembered?”

It’s a simple question, but the answer is rarely that simple. Indeed, most people have difficulty answering it at all. Few of us contemplate our legacies at all, even fewer actually do anything to consciously shape it. Most people adopt a qué sera attitude, figuring what will be, will be.

A couple of items involving local sports figures caught my attention the past few days. Sports stars have had an interesting transition the past few decades. Just a generation or so ago, they were among the most idolized public figures in America. That’s hardly the case today as their carefully crafted public personas are far too often brought down by substance abuse, gambling, sex scandals, violence or simply boorish, insensitive behavior.

But for every O.J. Simpson, there’s a Kurt Warner. For every Tiger Woods, there’s a Casey Blake. It was the actions of Warner and Blake that caught my eye last week.

Warner is a legendary figure in his home state of Iowa at the age of 39. After working as a stock boy for a supermarket chain, he rose through the football ranks to be a two-time National Football League most valuable player before calling it quits last week. Warner and his wife, Brenda, are widely respected for their philanthropic efforts through their First Things First Foundation and he was named the Most Caring Athlete last year by USA Weekend magazine.

It’s hard to say which was more famous during their amateur careers in Indianola, Iowa – Blake, the starting third baseman for the Los Angeles Dodgers, or his wife, Abbie Archibald Blake. But the couple have eternally endeared themselves to the youth of Indianola with their gift of $1 million – half of the $2 million the community is trying to raise to improve the high school athletic facilities, including an indoor track and completion of a football field.

The Warners and the Blakes have created legacies that extend well beyond their families and serve as stellar examples for us all by following the Golden Rule of legacy planning: Your legacy is only as good as the life you choose to lead.

Writing prompt for the day: Have you done anything to preserve your own personal legacy?

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

Five We Like: Another week of family history goodies

There’s a lot of good family history information available on the Internet. Here are five places we’ve enjoyed visiting recently:

An End to File Cabinet Genealogy. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re running out of places to store stuff.

Man buried with his guns inside his 1973 Pontiac Catalina. Definitely not your traditional sendoff.

The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody. Thanks to Allison Lippert for alerting me to this cool video.

The Last Newspaper. Blogger Gary Goldhammer’s take on the demise of the newspaper. Did the transition from stories to content hasten the decline?

A Day in the Internet. Lots of fun facts about what happens in 24 hours in cyberspace.

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

Flickr photo courtesy of takomabibelot.

Making the most of ‘cabin fever’

Winter got you down? If you live in a four-seasons part of the United States, your answer may very well be yes.

Here in Central Iowa, we’re not even through January and we’ve already received more snow than we would normally expect in a full winter season. And that’s on top of bone-numbing cold, ice storms and a persistent fog on those rare occasions when the temperature creeps above freezing. The sun has been pretty much a no-show except on the coldest of days.

One way to ward off the cabin fever that ultimately engulfs those who are housebound for extended periods of time is to start a family history project or work on your existing one. Here are a few things you can do besides watching TV or tripping through cyberspace:

Organize your e-mails. That means working your way through your inbox, tossing those messages that you no longer need and responding to those that call for a reply. Save only those messages that are absolutely necessary and put them in a folder that you will check. Be ruthless.

Manage your computer files. Take the same approach with your electronic filing system. You most likely have items there that have outlived their usefulness or weren’t that important in the first place. If you haven’t used something in the past year, it’s a good candidate for the trash bin.

Sort your stuff. From file cabinets to photos, it’s time to whittle down to just what you need. If you have family photos that you don’t really need, consider sharing with other family members.

Back up your data. What! You haven’t done this yet? Better get with it.

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

Flickr photo courtesy of Muffet.

Is ‘the sandwich generation’ part of your family history?

So what’s the deal with “the sandwich generation?”

If you’re not familiar with the term yet, you’d better gear up. It will be in the news all week as it’s reported to be the centerpiece of President Obama’s State of the Union address on Wednesday.

Simply put, the term refers to anyone who is caring for their elderly parents and their own children at the same time. While some demographers question the validity of the term itself, it is commonly believed that more people are suffering from this familial burden than at any other time in history.

There are plenty of factors that support this belief – elders living longer, couples delaying having children, the erosion of middle-class buying power – but the truth is that so-called “sandwich generations” have been around for virtually all of recorded history.

Three- (or four-) generation households were common just a generation or two ago. Children of those extended families gained valuable knowledge on dealing with elders as they went through the aging process under the same roof.

There is nothing unique about the concept of a sandwich generation, though it may be true that the pressures of modern American life have raised the anxiety level to unprecedented heights. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Dr. Edward T. Creagan of the Mayo Clinic gives some advice on how to deal with the stress of the situation. Read the comments, too, to see how others are coping. If financial matters are causing the stress, consider these tips from Laura Rossman.

Writing prompt for the day: Write about how your ancestors have dealt with the sandwich generation phenomenon.

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

Flicks photo courtesy of sweetonveg.

Remembering barber shops, a fading memory in some families

In my family, I’m something of a rarity – I get my hair cut at a barber shop.

As I recall, neither of my sons have set foot in an honest-to-goodness barber shop. I’ve tried from time to time over the years to lure them into my barber’s shop, but they have a preference for those hair salons that have popped up the past few decades. Such a shame.

When I was a kid, most of my haircuts took place in our basement with one of my parents wielding the clippers. This was a far cry from the comfy big leather chairs that my father undoubtedly enjoyed for himself. I realized what I was missing when I started to pay for my own haircuts, at just about the time I started college.

Since I was on a budget, I opted for a barber school in downtown Omaha. The price was right and they wouldn’t let you out of the place until your hair was inspected by the head instructor, a tight-lipped, straight-backed young man with sculpted hair who preferred nodding and pointing to actual conversation and smelled of Sen-Sen.

I eventually graduated to a two-chair shop in my neighborhood, where they actually trimmed nose and ear hair and eyebrows. They even applied a hot lather with a soft badger shaving brush and used a straight razor to block the back and trim your sideburns. It was heaven.

It’s no wonder that the shops were full on Saturdays with older men who appreciated the personalized service and lively banter among friends while dropping in for a "high and tight" or "three-finger fade." The smells of talc and bay rum mingled with Jeri’s Hair Tonic and Pinaud and Clubman toiletries to create an intoxicating atmosphere.

For a time in the 1970s I briefly strayed to a hair stylist. It was a two-seat shop that required at least a few hours notice. Despite the higher prices and shelves lined with fancy shampoos, conditioners and pomade, it was still basically a barber shop with an appointment book.

When I moved to Des Moines nearly 30 years ago, I found a simple barber shop, one with a candy cane pole beside the front door. It’s now a two-generation family shop boasting pictures of dad giving junior his first haircut and junior trimming up pop in his first professional gig.

There’s always a pot of coffee brewing with complimentary doughnuts or cookies in plain view. Most of the customers know each other and conversation flows freely. The reading material is more current and topical than your typical doctor’s office and the TV is fed by satellite, including all day games of the locally popular Chicago Cubs.

Who could ask for anything more?

Writing prompt for the day: Are there any hair-cutting stories in your family history?

Larry Lehmer is a professional family historian and legacy planner who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site, send him an e-mail or follow him on Twitter.

Flickr photo courtesy of naotakem.

Five We Like: Another week of family history goodies

There’s a lot of good family history information available on the Internet. Here are five places we’ve enjoyed visiting recently:

Ordinary Men, Extraordinary History. They made beds and cleaned toilets. They shined shoes, dusted jackets, cooked meals and washed dishes. Yet the Pullman porters created history in the face of adversity and racial prejudice. Great video and links from the folks at AARP.

Green Is the Way to Go. That’s the tagline for Creative Coffins which claims it can “provide a green solution for a distinctive funeral.” Check it out.

Venues Collect and Share Stories for Myriad Purposes. Got a family history story you want to share or would you just like to read someone else’s story? This list of online sites by Kathy Hansen may be just the ticket for you.

The World’s Greatest LP Album Covers. If you miss vinyl records, you probably miss their great artwork, too. Thanks to this site by Matt & Tony, you can relive those glorious days when an album’s design often overshadowed the music inside.

21 Things That Became Obsolete This Decade. Do you still have a landline telephone? Compact discs? If so, you may be surprised to know that you’re living in the past. This list shows how quickly innovation can be transformed into yesterday’s news. Remember the Walkman?

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

Flickr photo courtesy of doug88888.