My maternal grandparents always told great stories. Like most people, I probably didn’t listen closely enough when I was a kid and I wish now that I had the ability to go back and ask them to tell me the stories again.
I lost my grandfather when I was only 13, but I was fortunate to have my grandmother around for a long time. When I was in college, I fell in love with oral history as a tool to record personal experiences. I then asked my grandmother to record some of her stories. I sent her a tape recorder and cassettes—what I could afford as a college student. When I asked her if she had recorded any stories, she always put me off. For decades, I thought she chose not to record her history. After she died though, two cassettes were found. To my surprise and utter delight, she really did record stories of her childhood. What a priceless gift to leave behind. Grandma didn’t leave behind riches. She didn’t pass down expensive antiques or valuable jewelry. She left behind something more precious. She left behind her memories, her stories, her life experiences.
What an honor it was for me preserve my grandmother’s words and memories. Her stories of growing up as the daughter of recent immigrants, as the oldest sibling of nine children. Her memories of being a child in Chicago in the 1910s and 1920s and coming of age in the 1930s. Her experiences working at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933. My experience with preserving my grandmother’s story led me to want to help others tell their own stories and preserve their family’s history.
My grandmother Mary Irene Werner Beckman in Chicago, Illinois, 1930s.
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