Third Year Reflections

It’s now been almost exactly three years ago that Save Their Story, Inc. was launched and it’s rather poignant for me to reflect on all of the families I’ve met and the interviews my associates and I have conducted since that time. We’re so fortunate that they place their trust in us as they share the stories that are important to them. And the gift I receive in turn from their trust is truly enriching.

In addition to the history I have learned through hearing about their experiences as well as the significance that chance occurrences played in many of their lives, I also come away with a very positive sense of family. The obvious reason for this is that families that are in conflict with one another do not seek us out to preserve their stories because perhaps they’d rather forget than remember those experiences. But I am encouraged by the interviews of clients where accounts of serious family strife are told with an emphasis on the lesson learned of not repeating the pattern once they were adults with families of their own. These are lessons they instill in their own children just by the power of their example. And I can’t think of a better legacy they give to their children than breaking that pattern of dysfunction.

--Bridget Poizner

My Own Chance Encounter

Thinking about the last post I made, I realize a chance encounter was important in my own life as well. Meeting my husband was in large part due to a conversation I had when I was a freshman in college waiting in my dorm's lunch line. I started having a conversation with a girl I hardly knew and she was telling me about a place she was going to live for her sophomore year that was an off-campus student co-op (a place where the students all pitched in to maintain the property as well as cook the meals). I had always thought that for my sophomore year, I would continue to live at a dorm on campus but her description intrigued me and right after lunch I did some investigating. To make a VERY long story short, I did end up living at the co-op and two weeks after I moved in, I met one of my neighbors who lived down the hall. We became good friends and later started dating. Just this past week, we celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary. I can't help but think that if I hadn't had that conversation with someone I hardly knew that day long ago, my life would have been very different.
--Bridget

When 3 hours can seem like a lifetime...

One of the challenges in creating a Video Biography is to try and capture the essence of a lifetime in say, an hour or two... or as the case was on Tuesday, even three.

My interview with the Wallers* earlier this week was to do just that. To get them to share with me a slice of their life as it used to be when they were growing up... so that I could help them document that world; a world that now belongs only in their memory. But they remembered more than that. They remembered a time that belonged to their own parents (born in the 1890s) - whether they learned of this world from stories or shared memories or from looking at old pictures, who is to say? But tumbling out came tales of one-room schools, horse-drawn wagons, and a period in world history when 'fried chicken was not like it is today, with all sorts of crumbs on it'.

We talked about the world, yes... and marveled at automobiles, vacuum cleaners, the internet, and proms held at big hotels with the most glorious dresses to choose from at the stores. We talked about all that. But we also spoke about their own private universe as well... first crushes, first jobs, college, marriage, the Air Force, parenting, grandparenting... great-grandparenting.

And I learned a lot. I learned that Grandpas, under their tough and solid exterior have marshmallow hearts. Grandmas can go back to college to get their degrees at the same time as their children. Children can know their parents an entire lifetime - and still think that Air-Force-Dad actually used to fly to Japan during WW II to get back a pineapple for his favorite 'princess'. I learned, or shall I say re-learned, that we might know people for a lifetime and yet not know a whole lot about the kind of person they are... or used to be... or how they got to be one thing after being quite another.

And no doubt their children and grandchildren... and who knows how many generations after... will learn a lot about them through this interview. My only regret is that I'm going to have to be the one to reveal the pineapple coverup.

* Names have been changed to respect their privacy