Passing It On

Reunions are great, but they don’t last forever

I’ve got a confession to make: I so enjoyed my class reunion last weekend that I didn’t fully realize its significance. That’s a stark realization, coming from a personal historian whose profession is based on the value of claiming our legacies for future generations before they slip away.

It was a grand two-day affair that marked the 45 years that have passed since our class of 243 graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Of the 80 or so who took part, most were “reunion regulars,” classmates and spouses who catch up on our ever-changing lives every five years.

But there were surprises, too. I reconnected with Bernie Miller, who grew up across the street from me, but who I hadn’t seen since high school. I met Howie Anderson, cousin of a classmate, who played in local garage band Andy and the Manhattans  (“Double Mirror Wrap Around Shades,” sample it here or hear the entire song here). Dave Wolfe also shared the story of how he and a couple dozen of his army buddies from Vietnam rallied to the side of a dying former commanding officer.

But, as I absorbed as best I could the details of every conversation with every person I met over the weekend, I never once considered that this might be the last time I will see any of them. My local paper printed an essay about class reunions by Lynne Wisman (Mason City High School, Class of 1959) over the weekend. Lynne points out that the 50th “may be the last reunion, the last time we’ll see our high school friends.”

There are still about 200 surviving members of my high school class but we’re dying at an accelerating rate. Statistically speaking, that’s normal, but it’s still a somber and bittersweet realization that some of the people I shared a laugh with a few days ago won’t be around in five years to do it again.

Our reunion committee, spearheaded by Linda (Lee) Hook, had the great foresight to publish a survey of our class members for anyone who wants one. The much-appreciated resulting book contains bios and contact information for every classmate, plus a compendium of favorite stories, entertainers and songs as well as a list of our first cars. It was a first-rate job at preserving a slice of the personal histories of a group of people who came of age before cell phones, CDs and PCs. Thanks, Linda, and the rest of the committee.

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.

  Photo: Linda (Lee) Hook and Larry Lehmer at TJHS reunion by lwlehmer.

Time to dig out those high school yearbooks

Do you like class reunions? I thoroughly enjoy mine, although it took me over two decades before I went to one.

The first reunion I attended wasn’t even mine. It was my wife’s, 20 years after she graduated from Omaha’s Bishop Ryan High School. I had such a good time, I couldn’t wait for the next one, the 25th anniversary of Council Bluffs Thomas Jefferson’s class of 1963. We’ve been regulars ever since.

My class gets together again this month and I’ve been given the honor of speaking to the group about my work as a personal historian. My classmates and I are at that age of self-reflection where we look back on our lives, consider what we’ve accomplished and how it will matter to future generations.

High school reunions give us a chance to reconnect with an important part of our past, those who were at our sides during those formative years before we struck out into the unknown of the real world, to take our places among honest-to-goodness adults where our thoughts and actions truly meant something.

Stories are at the heart of every reunion. Stories of dreams fulfilled and promise unrealized, joy and heartbreak, life and death. Every story we hear or tell at a reunion matters to us. They are threads woven deeply in our life’s tapestry.

One point I hope to make to my classmates is that our family stories matter, too. Even if our kids and grandkids don’t care about them today, they will someday. It’s our job to make them available when they’re ready, even if that’s after we’re gone.

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.

Thomas Jefferson High School logo courtesy of neoarcana1.

Black hole of cyberspace swallowing up yearbooks

R.I.P., the high school yearbook.

While it may be a bit premature to permanently lay to rest that once-ultimate document of the high school experience, its demise has already been noted in some parts of the country and sales have plummeted just about everywhere else.

My good blogging friend, Stefani Twyford of Legacy Multimedia in Houston, Texas, brought this matter to my attention, referring to an article in the Houston Chronicle.

There was a time less than a generation ago when as many as 80 percent of high school students bought yearbooks, a figure that now stands around 10-20 percent in those areas where a yearbook is published at all.

The culprit appears to be the proliferation of social networking sites, like MySpace and  Facebook, which have made yearbooks seem positively quaint in this cyber age. As one who will attend my own high school reunion this summer, I wonder how the current electronic sites will factor into the reunions of the MySpace generation. Yearbooks are the source document for every high school reunion I’ve attended and I can’t imagine a reunion without them or suitable surrogates.

For my father, his high school yearbook yielded an unexpected connection with a person he’s never met and who lives several states away.

A couple of years ago, Dad received via mail a copy of the yearbook from his senior year along with a letter. The letter explained that the yearbook was a gift from a Texas attorney who had acquired it at a garage sale. The attorney had gone through a rough patch of substance abuse that had cost him his career and marriage a few years back and part of his therapy was to find yearbooks at garage sales, pick one person from the senior class, track that person down and send them the yearbook.

Although the attorney has restored his life and has rebuilt his career, he continues to seek out the yearbooks. My dad was inspired by the experience and, since he already had a copy of the yearbook, he called a few classmates to offer them his extra copy but found they had kept theirs, too. Keep in mind that these people graduated from high school 70 years ago.

Do you think today’s high school seniors will be keeping their MySpace profiles 70 years from now?

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.

Flickr photo courtesy of portia91.

Recording family stories is easier than ever

 

There was a time when tape recording was not an exercise for the timid. Equipment was heavy, bulky and expensive and the results were uneven. Plus, as the photo illustrates, not everyone responded the same way to the practice.

But almost all of us appreciate hearing stories from people close to us in their own voices. It's well worth the effort to get them and it's not nearly as difficult as it once was.

I was reminded of that recently on a visit with my mother-in-law. My wife and I have received a number of family items from her in recent years, but were unsure of the stories behind the items. We photographed each item and took the photos to her for identification.

While she told the story behind each item, I recorded her comments on a small digital recorder that I set on a table near her chair. After she was done and as I retrieved the recorder, she asked what it was. I explained and she commented that she hadn't even noticed it.

We got the information we wanted, in her own voice, and will add it to our own family history materials. The recorder I used was inexpensive, about $25, and I used the built-in microphone. With a lapel mike, I'm sure it would do even better.

There's a wide range of digital recorders available. You should be able to find one that works within your own comfort zone.

Digging deeper into Grandpa's past. Reporters and investigators have long used the Freedom of Information Act to uncover information about people they are looking into. All manner of government records are available under the FOIA, and access is not limited to journalists. Now comes a site that makes it easy to check for FBI records on deceased persons. The Get Grandpa's FBI File site will help you compose the actual letter, give you an idea on what sort of expenses might be incurred (they're minimal) and will direct you to appropriate field offices. Check it out.

Just for fun. Like to do jig saw puzzles? The JigZone site has hundreds that you can do online and has a feature where you can upload a photo and convert it to a puzzle. You can then share the puzzle with family and friends.

Coming up. July is Family Reunion month. Reunions are great occasions for launching family history projects. If you want some help in how to start such a project, contact me.

Flickr photo courtesy of Paul Smith UK.

Metaphorically speaking, this is what I do

I’ve been asked by Liz Strauss, through fellow Central Iowa Blogger Mike Sansone, to describe my blog in metaphorical terms. Intrigued by the offer, I have also come to the conclusion that it’s a very practical exercise as well.

To be honest, I’ve never been totally comfortable with the term “blogger.” For one thing, the term has little intrinsic value to anyone who came of age in the pre-Internet era. For another, the term conjures up images of little green frogs hopping on and off of rapidly moving cartoon logs in an early video game with a similar-sounding name.

But my biggest misgiving, I think, comes from the all-too-common belief that bloggers represent the marginalized fringes of our society, wackos with an ax to grind, a cause to promote or just some stream of consciousness drivel to dump into a largely apathetic cyberspace.

Of course, none of that describes what I’m trying to do here. The title of this blog (Passing It On) and the subtitle (“A site dedicated to preserving, celebrating and sharing family and personal history”) are accurate representations of my goals. Whether I achieve them or not is for you to decide, but I have found a metaphor that works for what I do: My blog is like a reunion.

After all, reunions are joyous occasions, where old friends or family gather and connect through their common past. Participants vary from reunion to reunion, fresh faces appear and old ones fade away but our stories and recollections bind us. We walk away with a better understanding of who we are, where we’ve been and what’s truly important to us. That’s what I try to do here.

You won’t get fried chicken, potato salad or be subjected to another round of Uncle Fred’s bad jokes but, if you close your eyes and concentrate real hard, you can almost smell it, taste it, hear it. I’d rather describe the experience of a family reunion than try to explain what a blog is.

Thanks Mike and Liz.

Flickr photo courtesy of  tmcmh.