My Experience
Stories I have written
My subjects have included an 85 year old attorney (still practicing!), a former oil wildcatter, and an enlistee in the Army's first integrated training battalion.
That all three are into their 80's and beyond is not a coincidence. Two were referred by their children, the third by a mutual friend. All wanted to get the first-hand family stories before they evaporated.
Here are the opening paragraphs from these projects.
Norm
"The Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania was a ripe region to start a business in 1946. Located less than a 90 minute drive from the major population centers of Philadelphia and New York, the coal-rich area of Northeastern Pennsylvania had long been a magnet for immigrants willing to work in the mines and, in ensuing years, the gargantuan forges of the Bethlehem Steel Company."
Doug
"On the unseasonably warm morning of June 13, 1927, having just turned five years old, I stood perched on the second floor balcony of a mansion that overlooked New York's Fifth Avenue. Staring down through a sea of ticker tape and confetti, I stood witness to the endless crawl of soldiers, marching bands, and dignitaries that were passing right below. The occasion was the return to the United States of Charles A. Lindbergh from his historic first-ever trans-Atlantic flight in the Spirit of St. Louis two weeks before."
Morris
"The familiar whistle that announced the approaching train hit my ears and, as happened most afternoons, caused me to leap from the stoop to race my daily dodge across the four lanes of traffic that separated me from the Lackawanna Railroad tracks. I loved trains and could never get close enough to them as they slowly rumbled by. On this day, however, I didn't make it to the tracks. In less than a heartbeat, my life was forever changed."
What's your story?
I'm ready to listen.