Connecting Means Sharing

Descendants Become Ancestors

While the search for family roots may be somewhat ingrained, the intense interest in genealogy that has developed and multiplied in recent years is largely due to explosions in both technology and research. The influx of personal computers on American society has spurred an unprecedented market for historical research. This demand for knowledge about family ancestors has led to the development of numerous websites, with researchers scurrying about to provide bits and pieces of data to continually satisfy all levels of genealogists.

What is often forgotten in this flurry of activity for ancestral knowledge is our own responsibility for keeping it going! Excited about the prospect of learning more about deceased relatives, we fail to plan for the day that we too will be added to that list.

Of course, this neglect is not universal. I have seen some marvelous life story accounts, numbering one hundred or more pages, carefully bound or placed in protective notebooks and intended primarily for family viewing and reading. In contrast, many consciously consider such endeavors to be frivolous, sentimental nonsense and a complete waste of their time.

Though the former group may profit from further encouragement and from some of the background material in this book, they have already "paid forward" their dues as the ancestors to coming generations. Their task is now expanded and modified. Above and beyond continuing to write their own ongoing stories, they can act as inspirers and mentors to all those who have not yet told their stories but silently might wish to do so. Perhaps they could even influence those skeptics who might never initiate story writing but might respond to the urging and nagging of friends and relatives.

However, this book is intended primarily for the huge majority of citizens in between these two extremes—those who value telling their stories but have not done so, those who have thought about it but are yet to begin, and those who have started and stopped, perhaps several times. While some of these may yet remain unwilling to actually write anything, they might be persuaded to verbally record their stories, if convinced of the importance.

My parents fit into this in-between group, so my brother and I videotaped nearly four hours of their life stories in the mid-1990s, a few years before their deaths at ages eighty-six and ninety-two. We have since transferred those four hours onto DVDs, which have been copied and made available to relatives for safekeeping. This procedure represents but one example of overcoming an initial reluctance to share life stories. Such stories can then be kept within the family or shared publicly at a later date, perhaps as a gift to a local museum.

Though older adults have perspectives on life not available to younger generations, children and teenagers should also be encouraged to contribute their ongoing experiences. Wouldn't most of us love to read the journals and diaries of our great-great-grandparents when they were in their youth? What a treasure that would be—not only to view the substance but also to have access to their thought processes, styles of communication, educational levels, daily activities, health issues, career aspirations, and so on! We adults can encourage new generations toward these activities, both by our enthusiasm and our modeling behavior.

Getting to Know My Initial World

It would be hypocritical of me to encourage readers to record life stories, while remaining silent about mine. Like everyone else, I am a product of genetics, education, life experiences, environmental influences, personal interpretations, and acquired beliefs—all of which have combined to shape my ongoing aspirations, behaviors, and attitudes. These are what make you and me different from one another and yet intrigued to discover not only our differences but also our similarities. Sharing lives and stories is the essence of existence. It's what makes life meaningful. It's what connects us. It's how we learn from one another.

Born during the Great Depression and growing up during the 1940s in a small village in a rural, economically depressed summer resort on the Canadian border in northern New York State, I was both protected and insulated from the massive post-World War II changes occurring in the big cities.

One hundred miles to the south was the nearest sizable city—its two TV stations unable to transmit clear images to our few well-to-do citizens, despite their oversized roof antennas and state-of-the-art seventeen-inch monitors. I never saw a TV set until I became a teenager, and then there was as much snow on the screen as there was on the ground outside. We got our news primarily from three sources: the regional newspapers to which nearly everyone subscribed, the radio newscasts of reporters such as Eric Severeid, Douglas Edwards, and Edward R. Murrow, and the Movietone and RKO Pathe news clips at the local movie theater prior to the showing of the feature film. Some of the news, of course, was weeks old by the time it got to us.

New technology was virtually nonexistent in our village. Phone calls were still patched in by live operators in a small building on the village waterfront, and many times I would have a short conversation with one of them, the mother of a friend, after I heard her familiar voice, "Number, please." Nor was it unusual to lift the receiver and listen in on conversations of others on the party line. Today such eavesdropping would be considered a terrible infringement of privacy, but back then it was merely an accepted nuisance and inconvenience. Of course, there were no computers, copiers, tapes, CDs, DVDs, video games, cell phones, digital cameras, iPads, iPods, or other conveniences we now take for granted.

Few families had automobiles, and none had more than one. Doors were left unlocked at night because crime was rare. Our...