Simple Steps to Capturing Hard to Find Stories

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Hello there! Great to see you as always. Today I want to help you find OTHER people’s stories—mainly, stories from your aging relatives. Trust me, I know this is not an easy job (and if you’ve ever tried, you know it too) but if you just tweak your approach a little bit, I assure you it’s worth the effort! So, here’s how to get Gramma’s stories before they are gone! The first key to getting a relative to share their story is to keep it casual. You may work well under pressure but Gramma probably doesn’t. Pick a time when everyone is just hanging out—maybe over dinner, maybe in the post-dinner afterglow… Don’t make a big deal of it—as far as your relative knows, this is just another conversation…AND! Whatever you do, DO NOT take out a voice recorder or a video camera… unless your relative did some reality TV in the past, that’s likely to shut the stories down. Just use your ears and really listen. Second suggestion: ask good questions. If you’ve ever tried to find stories before and were unsuccessful, this is where you likely went wrong. You said, “Grandma, tell me about the great depression” and she said, “I don’t know, it was good?” and you were mad because she didn’t tell you her story! That was your fault! Here’s the advice that was given to me by MY mentor Donald Davis to finding old stories—Our memories attach themselves to the nouns in our life—to the people, to the places, to the things, to the events. For example, ask your relative who their childhood best friend was. I can guarantee once Gramma starts talking about little Margo Sue who lived across the street… you’ll get all sorts of stories! Or ask about a place. “Tell me about your childhood home, Grandma..” Stories will emerge of things that happened in that home. My favorite question to ask my grandparents was “How did you meet grandma/grandpa?” I loved hearing the story of how my dad’s dad stole my grandmother away from another man at his birthday party! The day you met your spouse is an event people will remember and recount and forever and it’s a great place to start your story search. There you have it! A few simple tips to getting stories from your loved ones—and actually… I want to leave you with why this is particularly important to me. When I was in 8th grade, I had an ongoing assignment in my English class to interview family members who lived through the various eras in American history. For the Great Depression I interviewed my grandfather, for World War II I interviewed my grandmother, etc…. If I hadn’t done that assignment I never would have heard about the time that my mom’s father was walking home from grade school in the middle of the winter and was chased by a bear. The only way he was able to get home safely was lighting pages of the Sears Roebuck Catalogue on fire to scare the bear away; this is what it was like to live in Northern Minnesota during the Great Depression. If I hadn’t done that assignment I never would have known my grandparents fell in love in a laundry mat in the Deep South before my grandfather went off to World War II; they fell in love in an instant and stayed in love for a lifetime. My grandparents are gone now—both sets. Their stories are gone with them. Except for the ones they told me—stories I took the time to ask for. Now, a couple papers I wrote for 8th grade English assignments are some of my most treasured memories. Stories of who I am and where I come from. So it is my hope you will accept THIS assignment, and though I won’t be grading you, that you’ll find stories you can cherish for a lifetime.