FAQs

What advice do you have for people who want to preserve family stories?

I love oral history. I love the way it makes history come alive as it fleshes out the past with tales of ordinary people who did extraordinary things or lived through extraordinary times. My advice is to write down everything. No detail is too small. A good way to capture the totality of a person’s memory is to tape conversations with older relatives. Ask them about everyday life and their feelings about the events they lived through. Your final manuscript may be just for your family, or you may decide it has a broader appeal. Either way, it is a priceless heritage.