Where did I come from? Stories worth telling are worth passing down

Some years ago, my eight-year-old son asked me, “Where did I come from?” For those of us 55 and better, we may still recall this question our children asked us. Based on the way my son ate his meals back then, I was tempted to tell him that he came from cave dwellers. That bit of information would probably have gone over his head so I chose to honestly answer as best I could. Problem was that I didn’t have much in the way of stories about my grandparents or my parents. My wife had more stories about her grandparents and parents, but we weren’t steeped in family lore. Never dawned on me while my parents and grandparents were alive to write down their stories for just that moment in time to answer my son’s question of ancestry. 

Had I asked my maternal grandfather about his harrowing journey from Russia to the United States before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, I’m sure the tales he’d have told would have kept my son spellbound. But I didn’t have those stories of how as a teenager, my grandfather took his younger brother through Europe and eventually to America. I missed an opportunity to ask him what it was like for them to say goodbye to their parents and head into the unknown for an adventure they hoped would end with both boys in America.

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The journey to America was just one of many lost stories from my mother and father’s sides of the family that were never gathered in the first place. I know the stories were waiting to be written down, but I was fairly young when my paternal and maternal grandparents passed. Opportunity missed. I learned a little more about my parents because my son recognized the importance of ancestry and knew we lost out on his great grandparents’ stories and he didn’t want to have us face the same fate with his grandparents. But by the time we got around to talking to my mother and father, they were already in the early stages of dementia and the details of their lives were erasing quickly. 

Not for lack of trying to hear stories of my father’s WWII experiences but my father kept his D-Day soldiering to himself. I couldn’t get him to talk about something he’d rather forget. 

Roy U Moëd, a resident of London, England found the best way to get his father to talk about his experiences was to use a third party who would not only listen to his stories but ask, “what happened next?” Another question might be “how did you feel about…?” Why I’m bringing Moëd into this column is because what he put into play involves me now. Moëd decided not to let an opportunity pass by and engaged a friend as an interviewer and a ghostwriter and had his father tell his stories. His father said he was “remembering stories he did not know he had forgotten.” This decision by Moëd, LifeTime founder, created the beginnings of a worldwide memoir company called LifeTime Private Autobiography, part of LifeBook Limited. The services provided through Moëd were brought to the U.S. a few years ago and people began capturing their life time stories for future generations. 

With my experience of having interviewed thousands of people during a 45-year radio career, I was brought in to LifeTime Books as a contract interviewer. My first assignment started a few months ago and will continue for another few months. I’m interviewing a person that LifeTime calls an author. The “author” is telling the stories and my job is to ask good questions that help generate depth and character and move the story through a timeline worked out by the author. 

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The author is passing down his or her stories to family members. You can’t put a value on a family treasure that becomes a beautiful book. The author has committed to passing down a lifetime of stories with details that have not yet been lost or forgotten. As an additional part of the service, LifeTime Private Autobiography also directs the author to read a portion of the book into a recording that will present in part an oral history in the author’s voice. Not only will family members read the stories, but they’ll also hear from the author. 

“What’s your earliest childhood memory?” Think about this question for a moment. It may be a jumping off point for a whole lot of memories. But photos and documents will also give another view to one’s life and lead to additional dialogue in the mosaic of one’s life. Photographs and documents are gathered by the author during the whole process from the first interview to the final interview. Pictures and documents add to the authentication of family history. A copy of the photo of the author as a child or of the author’s grandmother or grandfather is then preserved in the book. Some authors must select from hundreds if not thousands of photos for the book. Although it’s unlikely an author will have as many documents, each and every document has value such as a marriage certificate of a great grandmother and grandfather or of a ship manifest showing family members came to America.  

As we close in on the holidays, you might think what type of gift you can give your family of a lasting nature. Your story with your words is powerful and reinforces the love you have for them. They’ll know you worked very hard on answering the question, “Where did I come from?”

Stew Cohen is a staff writer for Sun Day and MyHuntleyNews.com and works as a contract interviewer for LifeTime Private Autobiography, the North American trading name of Private Autobiography Service Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of LifeBook LTD which was registered in England in 2011. You may reach LifeTime Private Autobiography at www.lifetimememoirs.com.

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