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Getting Started
Requires First Step
By
Cathy Corcoran |
 Brockton
- If the house was on fire, and all the people and
animals were safely outside, what’s the one thing you’d save
from your house? “The pictures,” most people say. Why?
Because they’re precious. They’re irreplaceable. They tell
your family story.
When my mother died last year, she was 99 years old, and
nearly all of her contemporaries were long gone. When people
came to her funeral, I wanted them to know my mother, so I
wrote a little piece about her and some of the stories of
her life.
My sister and I quickly assembled old photos - my mom as a
young girl, as a bride, a young mother, a grandmother. We
pasted the pictures onto art boards that were displayed at
the funeral home and made a slide show that played on my
laptop.
“What was she like?” my friends asked, and I told them.
When my mom was born, there was no electricity in her house,
and light came from gas lamps that hung on the wall. Her
father had the first automobile in their South Boston
neighborhood and my mom and all her brothers and sisters
would pile into the Model T for rides on Sunday afternoons.
Sometimes they drove from South Boston all the way to Quincy
or Dedham!
My mom had a great sense of humor; she played the piano,
bought a car and learned to drive when she was in her
mid-fifties. I miss her every day, but she lives on in the
family stories we tell. A few weeks after the funeral, my
mom’s brother John came to my house. John is my mom’s last
surviving sibling, and he had stories of his own. I set up a
video camera and taped John as he talked about my mother as
a young girl, about her marriage, about the Great Depression
and World War II. I was entranced.
I wanted to do more. I videotaped my sister and myself
talking about our mom. We reminisced about her cooking,
about our summer vacations in Maine, about my mom’s love for
her grandchildren. We looked at pictures of ourselves as
little girls sitting in our mom’s lap. We laughed and we
cried.
Before I knew it, I had a video documentary about my mother.
It took many hours, but it was a labor of love. The stories
are priceless, and because they’re now on videotape, they’ll
survive. My mom’s great grandchildren are little tykes. They
may not remember her, but when they’re older, they’ll know
her through those stories.
When I told friends about my project, they wanted to save
their family stories too. One friend talked about the old
neighborhood on Mission Hill in Boston, another was full of
stories about her privileged upbringing in Milton. My friend
Helen got a faraway look in her eyes, and told me about her
mother’s childhood in Ireland.
She left Galway when she was only 16, and sailed across the
Atlantic to America. She married, and after her husband was
disabled, she worked as a maid, cared for her husband and
raised seven children on her own.
Helen is still youthful in my eyes, but she’s well into her
eighties now. She has two little great-grandchildren. Won’t
they want to hear those stories when they grow up?
“Get these memories on videotape,” I told her. “I wouldn’t
know where to start,” she said. “I’ll help you,” I answered.
I learned a lot from the project I did on my mother. I’ve
learned a lot from interviewing hundreds of people for
stories I’ve written for The Patriot Ledger, for WATD Radio,
and for other projects. I can help Helen and others like
her.
So now I work with others to preserve their family stories.
We assemble photos and make books. We make slide shows and
videos. We tell those precious stories and we preserve them
for those who’ll come after us.
I can help, but you can do it on your own too. All you have
to do is begin.
The holidays are coming. Rather than giving another sweater
for Christmas, why not make a book or a slide show or a
video about you and the stories of your family? What a gift
that would be
In the months to come, I’ll be offering tips on how to
select and edit your family stories, how to get other family
members involved, how to use new technologies to produce a
book or a video that will be the one thing anyone would save
if the house were on fire.
Every culture in human history has told stories that pass on
their joys, their hopes, their values. Stories connect us
with others, with those who came before us, and those who
will come after us. Family stories are precious. Don’t lose
yours.
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About The Author
Cathy Corcoran has been a columnist and feature writer
for The Patriot Ledger, a radio host for 95.9 FM WATD, and a
communications consultant for the Massachusetts Department
of Public Health and many other clients. She helps preserve
family stories through books, slide shows, videos and how-to
workshops. Her web site is www.HowtoTellYourFamilyStory.com..
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