Recording Your Family History: A Call to Action!

I remember the first time I lugged a cassette recorder out to Seattle to record my grandmothers. I was 25 and asked dumb questions like, "How much did it cost when you came over on the Queen Mary?" They patiently swatted them away and told me what THEY wanted to say about their lives, their childhoods, their marriages, coming to America, raising children and their hopes as women.

Tip # 1: Listen.

I didn't play back the tape until five years later. My first grandmother had just died and I dug through my desk for the tape. I panicked it would be blank. As I popped it in, I heard the sounds of her backyard in Seattle, her dog barking and the cars driving by. We sat at the picnic table and I heard her voice again: her thick Norwegian accent, her asthmatic wheeze and girlish giggle. I was transported. The intimacy of hearing her voice was physical and comforting. It was a last embrace, a fix of love I could hang onto with the press of a button.

Tip # 2: Take lots of photographs and videos of a loved one, but recording audio is the most intimate way to recall someone's presence.

Facts and chronologies are great, but you want the STORIES people tell about their lives. That's where you understand what makes a person tick, where they find meaning in their lives, and hear the emotions that make them human. For example, I wanted to know what my grandmother's marriage to my grandfather was like. She was a homemaker, and I knew my grandfather wasn't the easiest guy to be married to. This little story revealed everything to me about the dynamic in their marriage (audio clip uses RealPlayer).

We were after my grandmother for years to write down her life story. It was overwhelming to her. And I can guarantee she never would have written down the tuna and hogshead stories!

Tip #3: Ask to hear your favorite family stories-funny, tragic, lucky, providential-and record them.

Where did your family come from? Why did they come to America? (Minnesota Public Radio is gathering your stories about coming to Minnesota.) Every Christmas, my Norwegian grandmother would tell the bittersweet story of the first Christmas in America:

My immigrant grandmother tells the story of the family's first Christmas in America. (audio clip uses RealPlayer)

There's a lot packed into these stories and there's a reason we tell them over and over again. I think the point of my grandmother's story was to reflect on how far our family had come from that first Christmas when they were too poor to afford presents. She loved America and America was good to her in return.

Sometimes you might try to interview people together. Sometimes siblings remember family stories differently. A married couple's interaction while telling you the story of how they met tells a lot about their relationship. Listen to this engagement story (audio clip uses RealPlayer).

I love the way they laugh through that whole story. So even though it's this terribly unromantic story on the face of it, it's clear it worked out very well for them and they're very much in love.

Tip #4: Look for pairings: married couples, parent and child, siblings who can play off each other and provide different takes on a family story.

Sound offers you a chance to record more than words. Here's a piece of tape that utterly astonished me. I was interviewing a 93-year old friend of the family about her life. Marie Egge grew up in a small Norwegian farming community in North Dakota. I wanted to get a sense of her childhood. Listen to what she gave me (audio clip uses RealPlayer).

That's the power of the human voice. When she sang that song, I could see that prairie and those kids in front of me. I was transported.

Tip #5: Be creative with what you record. Ask grandpa to sing a favorite song, play a tune, show you a collection, read you a letter he kept for 50 years, tell you a joke. Get the stuff around the edges that show personality, not just the formal "interview."

All our family stories are set against a bigger canvas of history. What happened to your family during The Great Depression? World War II? Do your grandparents remember FDR's fireside chats? Getting electricity and indoor plumbing? What were the "firsts" in your family? First to go to college? First to leave the farm? First woman in the family to have a career outside the home? How did your family deal with race relations?

I did some interviews for an American RadioWorks project called "Remembering Jim Crow" where we interviewed African Americans about how they navigated the color line during America's period of legal segregation. They had searing childhood of memories of the moment they understand they were somehow inferior: the separation from white playmates they had in early childhood before they understood race, the humiliation of having to step off the sidewalk when a white passed. Their fear of being hurt. Della Sullins of Tuskegee, Alabama told me a story about a "whites only" restaurant in the town where she grew up, Charlotte, North Carolina (audio clip uses RealPlayer).

Hopefully if you've read this far, you're thinking about doing an interview! Here's some more basic advice to get you started.

Don't wait. Do it now. Don't wait until people are old, or sick or have hazy memories.
Holidays can be a time when people get together and you might be able to take grandma aside for an hour to record.
If you have the luxury, multiple sessions can capture different moods and energy levels. Give older people a rest. It's a lot to tell a life story in one sitting.
Ask open-ended questions: tell me about...how did you feel when...--go for the "spigot" interview...where the stories keep gushing.
Ask how they met, about courtship, how they felt about particular moments in their lives and how they were changed by them
Think about legacy. What will people want to hear once the person is gone. It's comforting to know their thoughts on religion and facing death. What values do they want to pass on to their kids? What was passed on to them? What was the happiest period of their lives? Biggest do-over? What are they proudest of?
Don't skip over what's painful. These are some of our most important stories. But use your judgment about how much to push.
Don't assume you know the answers to the questions you ask. The best moments will be the surprises.
You can hire pros, but you are the best person to do the interview because you probably know the family stories you want to pull out. Plus they're comfortable with you.
It's a good idea to transcribe the interview. Hard copies more durable than any CD or electronic copy.

Recording Tips:

My colleague Mark Hinsz in the Operations Department at MPR has these recording tips for you:

Almost any computer / laptop should have a microphone input and some sort of recording software nowadays - Apple's Garageband etc. Ask any teenager to help you.

You can also hook up microphones to iPods and use them as recording devices.

Find a quiet room ( no fans, furnaces, TVs, screaming kids - well, maybe you want that)

Get the microphone as close to the people you're interviewing as possible, without invading their private space and making them uncomfortable.

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