Last week Facilitator Kate Brown and I visited Gleason’s, one of the oldest boxing gyms in Brooklyn, and now we want to be boxers. Veronica Ordaz, the New York City Community Outreach Coordinator who set up the day of interviews, told me that after visiting the gym, she’d resolved to do the same thing. She told me she was convinced after meeting with Bruce, the owner of Gleason’s, who was also our first interview of the day.

Read the rest of this entry »

_{Fellow Facilitator Kate Brown with participants at a recent Memory Loss Initiative recording day}

As a Facilitator, I have been present for a number of conversations with people experiencing memory loss as part of the StoryCorps Memory Loss Initiative. Sometimes these conversations are an opportunity for the person with memory loss to share his or her stories, but it is not always so straightforward. In one conversation, a son and his father sat with their sensational mother and wife, whose stroke had left her unable to speak more than a few words. She listened to her husband recount their four year courtship through letters while he served in World War II.

Her son also remembered her devotion to her children and the love for theater she instilled in him. She was quiet and unresponsive during the interview but dazzled everyone near the end with a smile and the words, “Them were the days.” While her voice barely registers on the recording, she is present in the voices of loved ones as they narrate her story. Read the rest of this entry »

On August 5, Anna Walters and I traveled to Menorah Home and Hospital in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn.  I met Ralph Wolfe, a resident who came to talk with his good friend Jane Rosenthal, the Executive Vice President of the Menorah facility. Ralph’s story shed light on what it was like to grow up deaf in the 30s, and how much has changed since then.

At age seven, Ralph lost his hearing to scarlet fever, the same disease that left Helen Keller and Thomas Edison deaf in childhood. Still, Ralph was determined to stay in public school. He taught himself to read lips and was the first hearing-impaired student to graduate with honors from his grade school in Brooklyn. Although Ralph had learned to speak and succeed on his own in school, his deafness was deemed “disruptive” in high school. Read the rest of this entry »

StoryCorps stayed closer to home last Thursday and visited the Arab American Association of New York in Brooklyn. Under the leadership of Co-founder and Board President Dr. Ahmad Jaber, AAANY actively responds to the the social and economic programming needs of the Arab community in the greater New York City area. AAANY’s clients include Arabs and Arab Americans from the countries of Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Moracco, and Palestine, among others. With youth programs like after-school tutoring, boys basketball, and the Princess Club, the organization’s providing ESL and citizenship classes, and its upcoming Salaam Series Workshops with Brooklyn for Peace, AAANY is poised to remain “the Ellis Island of the Arab Community” while fulfilling its mission threefold: “Our aim is for families to achieve the ultimate goals of independence, productivity, and family stability.”

Read the rest of this entry »

On Sunday, June 1st. Brooklyn’s Sephardic Community Center invited StoryCorps to interview participants during their “Afternoons Out…Together” celebration. The community center hosts this event as an interactive Sunday for family caregivers and their loved ones. They not only allow guests the option of doing a StoryCorps interview but they also provide a catered feast, activities such as partner yoga, pilates, workshops and sing-a-long entertainment. On this day Michael Roth played piano during the days festivities as staff, especially our host and the Social Services Director, Linda Eber, made sure that all guests had a very special day.

Enjoy the slideshow of the event. Click on an image for more information: