Passing It On

The voices that shaped our lives deserve saving

Oral history is hot.

People everywhere are getting the message about recording their family stories. Whether on audiotape, videotape or digital media, there's nothing that compares with hearing a family story told by a family member.

Although my primary business as a personal historian was putting together a written record of a family history, oral history was an integral part of the process. Much of a written record is based on recorded interviews which become part of the overall project.

I occasionally teamed up with a videographer to offer a comprehensive personal history package. Our collaboration made possible the best of both disciplines.

The written record provides an in-depth narrative record of the family's history that, besides providing interesting reading material, serves as a primary reference book. The accompanying 20- to 30-minute professional video captures the highlights of the written work visually, told by many of the book's "main characters."

National Public Radio carries excerpts from its StoryCorps project every Friday on its Morning Edition program. The StoryCorps project features two mobile recording studios that travel the country, recording the stories of everyday America. The stories are testaments to the power of the spoken word. Some are available at the StoryCorps web site.

But StoryCorps is not the only oral history project around. There are many. Check them out. Perhaps you'll find an interview with a long-lost relative. At the very least, you'll come away with some ideas on how to incorporate oral history into your own family history project.

Flickr photo of StoryCorps studio courtesy of  Laura, KCUR.

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died: The Last Tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- is available at Amazon.

It’s official: You can share a story today

Are you sharing a family story today?

Today has been designated International Day for Sharing Life Stories and many communities around the world are holding special events to commemorate the occasion. Here in Central Iowa, I’ll be participating in tonight’s Two Rivers Story Spinners’ event at Des Moines Area Community College.

I’m looking forward to hearing other people share stories from their life experiences. For my part, I’ll probably tell the story about a public spectacle involving my grandfather and root beer. If you’re in the area, drop by and I’ll share it with you.

Not so coincidentally, today just happens to be the 96th birthday of story teller extraordinaire, Studs Terkel. Terkel, an oral historian from Chicago who became a public television star a few decades back, has a new book out, “Studs Terkel Interviews: Film and Theater.”

Even if you miss out on today’s festivities, you can make amends by sharing a life story or two with your loved ones over the weekend. What are you waiting for?

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

Flickr photo courtesy of wgbhmorningstories.

Vitame vas: Listen to the sounds of your family

 

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “wonderful wielders of the willow?”

Although the alliterative use of the letter “w” starting with “wonderful” has an almost poetic feel to it, it actually comes from an account of a baseball game a century ago by New York Times writer W.J. Lampton. Sounds better than “batters,” don’t you think?

Sportswriters of the past were colorful characters themselves and their sportswriting often reflected the flowery prose that was so popular in their times. Although that style of writing has largely disappeared, similarly colorful family phrases are often passed on to succeeding generations.

For example, English was the language of choice in my wife’s household as she grew up, but her mother used enough words from her own Czech heritage that my wife picked up on them and stored them in the deep recesses of her mind from where they emerge at the most unexpected times, amazing those of us around her who have never heard the phrases before.

Families of immigrants often carry the native tongue of their ancestors through successive generations, adding popular American sayings like “you’ll poke your eye out” or “if your friend jumped off a cliff, would you do it, too?”

Think about the language of the household of your youth. Where did those phrases come from? Do you talk like your mother or father?

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

 

Storytelling: The art of saving real history

In my role as a personal historian, I’ve interviewed many people who survived The Great Depression. I’ve documented their experiences as they struggled with drought, disease, heartbreak, poverty and chinch bugs.

But none of them lived through the horror of the 2,500 people of Franklin, Tennessee, who woke the morning of Dec. 1, 1864, to find over 9,000 dead Union and Confederate soldiers in their backyard, the result of an hours-long battle the night before that ended with doomed soldiers trampling over corpses of the fallen, the sharp sound of crackling bones intermingled with moans of the dying in the waning hours of the slaughter.

The Battle of Franklin is the pivot point of “The Widow of the South,” the best-selling novel by Robert Hicks, our keynote speaker Saturday at the 2007 Conference of the Association of Personal Historians.

Hicks is a first-rank storyteller in that fine Southern style. His presentation was centered around that battle, which some Civil War historians have called “the last hurrah of the Confederacy.” He also told the tale of his brash introduction to noted Civil War historian Shelby Foote in Memphis and how he recruited an unlikely ally to persuade Foote to temporarily suspend his policy of “not inscribing books for strangers.”

But it was Hicks’ telling of the legacy of Carrie McGavock that reveals how historical fiction “is about how ordinary people can become extraordinary people because of circumstances.” It was McGavock, the heroine of Hicks’ novel, and her husband John who cared for hundreds of wounded soldiers following the Battle of Franklin and provided two acres of their Carnton Plantation for the final resting place for 1,500 of the dead.

One of the points Hicks made was that formal historians don’t preserve history, storytellers do. Keep that in mind as you collect your own family stories

Another blogger. My friend Stefani Twyford of Legacy Multimedia in Houston, Texas, is also blogging from the conference. Stefani specializes in video and does a great job. She’s also one of the few people I know who’s brave enough to karaoke “Keep On Chooglin’.”Check out her blog.

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.
Photo: Author Robert Hicks signs a copy of  "The Widow of the South" for past APH president Lettice Stuart.

People lie (or at least stretch the truth a bit)

I learned early on in my career as a newspaper reporter that the truth can be elusive.

“People lie,” is the mantra of Dr. Gregory House, the wildly popular fictional TV character. “People embellish,” is my decidedly more benign take on the matter as it pertains to family stories.

This became abundantly clear when I was researching my book, “The Day the Music Died: The last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens.”

In the nearly half-century since the fatal plane crash that killed the singers, dozens have claimed to have avoided fate by either passing up a seat on that four-seater plane at the last minute or skipping that tour altogether.

In one of my interviews, I was told by someone (I think it was Waylon Jennings or J.I. Allison, one of the Crickets) that “if everyone was on that plane that said they were supposed to be on that plane, they’d have needed a 747.”

It wasn’t just celebrities that exaggerated their roles in the tragedy, either.

Time and again I was referred to people who had had contact with the singers around the time of the crash and had told hair-raising versions of “the real story.” Time and again when these people realized they were being interviewed on the record for a book, they backed off their versions and told a much tamer, less remarkable tale.

Embellished family stories are common. Sometimes we know they’re not true, but pass them on anyway. Sometimes we enjoy the different versions of the same story that are floating about. Sometimes we simply don’t know where the truth lies.

Each family deals with this differently. Here is how storyteller Ann Hagman Cardinal dealt with the shock of discovering the truth behind some of her favorite family stories. Joe McKeever describes the role that embellished family stories plays in his family’s reunions.

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

Flickr photo of Hugh Laurie as Dr. Gregory House courtesy of  improv_7.

Accidental documentaries: The sounds of our past

Over the weekend I happened to catch part of the This American Life program on National Public Radio. This weekend's program was called "Accidental Documentaries." During the program, host Ira Glass played excerpts of audio tapes from a variety of sources, including one found in a Salvation Army thrift store.

The recordings were rich with family stories, many obviously were never intended for the national audience delivered by NPR. They were riveting, if in a voyeuristic sense.

There was a time when I was deep into audio recording myself. Although I started using audiotape as a means of identifying radio stations, I soon expanded it to incorporate my music collection. It was  a short hop to recording family events and conversations.

Although most of those recordings have been lost, I still managed to come up a few earlier this summer while working on my own family history. Included were tapes of my children at very young ages, snippets of phone conversations and radio station appearances and a complete cassette from my mother-in-law from back in the day when swapping tapes between out-of-town relatives was in vogue.

At one point, I bought a box of reels of tape at a garage sale with the intent of recording over them. Upon checking, however, I realized there were hours of giddy conversations among teenage girls from the 1970s, the golden age of mass reel-to-reel recording. I started to save parts of these conversations but soon realized I lacked the family context to make them relevant. How I wished I could have returned them to the rightful owner.

What about you? Do you have any "Accidental Documentaries" tucked away somewhere? Even if you don't, your relatives might. It's worth checking.

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

Flickr photo courtesy of Status Frustration.

 

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.

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

Flickr photo courtesy of Paul Smith UK.

Oh me, oh my, oh mio...should I do books or video?

 

Ah, yes, the old which-format-do-I-use question.

This is often the second question I get as a personal historian, right behind "What is it you do exactly?"

As a writer by trade, I'm partial to the written word. Books, after all, have been around for centuries. Your ancestors are much more likely to deliver their stories in the form of old letters, diaries, journals, documents and articles clipped from publications than as audio or video records.

The written word, even though most of it is currently produced on computers, is less prone to succumb to the advance of technology. Music in my lifetime, for example, has gone from shellac (78s) to vinyl (45s, LPs) to magnetic tape (reels, two-tracks, four-tracks, eight-tracks, cassettes) to CDs to PCs (MP3s, WAVs, etc.) to iPods. Video has followed a similar path (remember Betamax?).

The truth is, though, that there's nothing quite like hearing a familiar story told in the familiar voice of a parent or grandparent. Even if you've never met a person, hearing their voice or seeing them on video, gives you a perspective that is simply unavailable in print.

Fortunately, most of my family history work involves interviews, which are recorded, transcribed and given to the client. In addition, I'm working with a local videographer so that we can provide the best of both worlds: I create a written work that provides the detail and depth that only a written work can while my video friend records the interviews and edits them into a professionally done 20-30 minute video.

In any personal history project, recording stories before they are lost is the No. 1 priority. Just about everyone has a sad story of how they always meant to record so-and-so's story, but they were gone before they could get it done.

So, what are you waiting for?

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

Flickr photo courtesy of  xanadubijoux.