At age five, Sam Compton learned that his father had been killed in a plane crash over South Dakota. Ever since, Sam’s only recollection of Staff Sergeant Samuel Logan Compton, Sr. was of the faceless man who put him to bed one moment and left for World War II the next: “I had not been able, in my mind, to know that I had looked my father in the face, and that had always bothered me.”

Sam and his wife Carolyn visited the Nashville StoryBooth on Wednesday, July 16. During their conversation, Sam explained how his 1996 investigations into his father’s death eventually led to a better understanding of the crash and an air show at Ellsworth Air Force Base in honor of Sam’s father and crew.

In his interview, Sam described the “wave of peace” that came over him when he visited his father’s crash site at Ellsworth: “I shut my eyes and all of the sudden, in my mind’s eye, I could see a pilot standing atop that hill with a five year old boy… While I could not look at the face of my father, I feel the blessings [that] came to me to give me a connection and give me a release. I truly believed that I was blessed.”

In the course of their investigation, Sam and Carolyn were contacted by a woman whose father had attended gunnery school with Sam’s father. An artist, Samuel Logan Compton, Sr. sketched the following caricature into his fellow airman’s graduation book using the pen name “Leroy.” Sam now keeps a copy of this sketch in memory of his father.

Sisters Stafford and Tyla swept into our Foley Square StoryBooth Thursday evening to share breezy reminiscences of their Brooklyn childhood. Tyla, a staff person with New York City Community Partner Brooklyn College Student Center, was a veteran having previously brought in her husband for an interview and thus urged her sister to occupy the storyteller seat for a fun forty minutes.

Spirited doesn’t even begin to describe the tight twosome. When presented with an opportunity to remember their adolescent escapades, the two volleyed back and forth like Venus and Serena, never with more intensity than when recalling the antics of their bold mother Virginia. Read the rest of this entry »

The New York City StoryBooth is nestled in the heart of Lower Manhattan in historic Foley Square. This small island oasis is part greenspace part memorial on what used to be Collect Pond and the African American Burial Ground, it offers panoramic views of civic landmarks such as the New York County Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall Courthouse, the visual center-piece is artist Lorenzo Pace’s “Triumph of the Human Spirit” Memorial and now StoryCorps’ lone New York City StoryBooth.

Early morning residents of near by Chinatown practice Tai Chi on the park’s lawns. During business hours a steady flow of tourists pose and snap shots while the area’s nine-to-five inhabitants - business people, lawyers and civil servants bustle to and fro. A transient parks his overloaded trestle by a park bench and washes up muttering to sweet nothings to himself, children play in the cool water of memorial’s fountain. They all seem to lead disparate and disconnected lives. Later, two participants come to booth and spend forty minutes of quiet, uninterrupted time together. They come talk about anything, their history - family, friends, hopes, dreams, fears, loves of their life. In the end, they’ve shared a part of themselves, their stories, their lives, and leave having had an opportunity to make history. With their permission their conversation is archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

People come by the booth all the time to ask questions: “What is this?”, “Do you have a restroom?” (we don’t) or to proclaim “Now I gotta story to tell”. Many have returned to do just that.

And who says Lower Manhattan is dead after hours? When the sun sets, after the denizens of Lower Manhattan corporate life return home and the tourists migrate uptown, Foley Square becomes a destination some of the city’s more colorful characters, skateboarders practicing jumps, couples on late-night romantic walks, and those just looking for a place to rest their feet after a long day of touring the city. Each has a story to tell…

Mort and Meredith Young came to the StoryBooth  to document their love story as a gift to  their grandsons. They say it was love at first sight – almost. Actually, there were several occasions over eleven years when they should have met, but life stepped in and said, “not quite yet.”  After years of living  separate lives, a friend of Meredith’s  arranged  a blind date. Mort said, “When that door opened, and I saw you, I knew that you were the woman I wanted to marry.” And, 50 years later… well, the picture says it all.

Maureen Rosen at our Lower Manhattan StoryBooth

“Come on up love, we’ve got a nice cup of tea for you.” Those were the first words heard by Maureen after finding herself buried beneath the debris of her family’s fire-bombed home. Air raids occurred nightly, but on this day the family couldn’t make it to the bomb shelter in the living room so they found safety atop a mound of coal under the stairs. This was London in the time of WWII. Maureen’s father was fighting in the British navy while she, her mother, and baby brother were left to defend themselves and hopefully, live to tell. Maureen was little more than a toddler but old enough to know the warning sounds of an incoming bomb. These are her earliest memories - the taste and smell of air raids and coal dust. Naivety oftentimes escapes little girls unlucky enough to get caught in war, but not all realities reveal themselves so terribly. Most of the bombs aimed for her neighborhood missed and in their wake grew wild flowers. Back then Maureen wondered why the Germans dropped flower seeds with their bombs. Not knowing until later that there was a chemical in the explosion that also acted as a fertilizer, growing pretty little things amidst the chaos.

On Tuesday, May 6, 2008, the Nashville Public Library and StoryCorps facilitators Kate Wingate, Martha O’Brien, Esi Arthur, and Cindy Murphy hosted a StoryCorps Community Listening Party at the Green Hills Branch Library. Over 75 people attended this event, including past participants, curious newcomers, library employees, WPLN 90.3 FM staff, and various other members of the Nashville community.

Attendees met facilitators and past participants, learned about StoryCorps and the Nashville StoryBooth, and listened to several StoryCorps clips, including two local Nashville clips that aired recently on NPR’s Morning Edition: Joe Buford and Michelle Miller, and Hector Black. Later, past StoryCorps participants James Staub, Rosemary Weldon, Brenda Wynn, and Emily Brittain shared highlights of their own experience in the Nashville StoryBooth. They also served as panelists, answering attendees’ questions regarding StoryCorps interviews in general.

This event was an immense success, and we look forward to similar events in the future. In the meantime, the facilitators wish to recognize Deanna Larson, Elyse Adler, and James Havron for their support in planning the Community Listening Party, as well as Claudia Schauman and the Green Hills Branch staff. We’d also like to thank the Woodbine Community Organization’s Seniors Group for transporting their members to the Green Hills Branch Library for this event. And a very special thank you to the Nashville Public Library Foundation for catering and supporting Nashville’s very first StoryCorps Community Listening Party.

On Wednesday, May 14 StoryCorps staff and alumni bid farewell to our flagship StoryBooth in the Biltmore Ballroom in Grand Central Terminal. Founder Dave Isay spoke briefly about the history of the booth and what it has meant to the thousands of people who have shared their stories within its soundproof panels. He then handed the microphone over to VIP alumni Annie Perasa and Louisa Scioscia Stevens. In 2004, Annie recorded a love story so passionate that we dedicated the booth in honor of her and her late husband, Danny Perasa. Louisa Scioscia Stevens believed so strongly in the power of oral history and StoryCorps’ mission that she’s participated in 100 interviews at the Grand Central StoryBooth alone. Guests wrote farewell notes and recorded testimonials in the booth reminding us just how valuable the booth has been to their lives and families. Throughout we were moved to tears as we said, “Goodbye, you’ve served us well old friend.”

Enjoy the slide show. Click on a photo to get more information.

_{Lloyd “Tyke” Riddick (R) and interview partner Angela Bray (L).}

Lloyd Riddick is the kind of person who could tell you stories all day. From his beginnings in “Harlem, USA”; to joining the Air Force as a radio intercept operator; to becoming a top salesman at IBM. Mr. Riddick has done it all and then some, but he has one story for the history books. One night during the Cold War, while stationed in Germany as a radio intercept operator, Mr. Riddick discovered a signal he had never heard before. He passed off his transcription of the dots and dashes coming over his headset, and the next day learned that he was the first person west of the Iron Curtain to capture the signal coming from Sputnik, the Russian satellite. However, it was more than 40 years later, long after the Space Race had ended, that he was honored for his contribution, and able to publicly share his story.

On the morning of April 3, StoryCorps staff, our supporters and partners, and press came out to Foley Square in downtown Manhattan to celebrate our newly relocated and reopened Lower Manhattan StoryBooth. Now the flagship booth in New York, our Foley Square location puts us in the heart of one of the most historic neighborhoods in New York City. Read the rest of this entry »

Nashville cultural historian Cynthia Bond Hopson visited the Nashville Story Booth yesterday to record her story. Facilitator Martha O’Brien interviewed her and asked Cynthia about her family and her strong bond with her parents. When speaking of her parents, Cynthia’s sparkling eyes, bright smile, and joyful laugh left no doubt about her love and appreciation for them and the lessons they taught her. She described her father as a big man with a big heart who “made everyone want to do better,” including Cynthia and her seven siblings. Among the important life lessons they imparted to their children were to “treat others as you want to be treated” and the belief that “If you do right, right will follow you.” She credits her family’s closeness in part to the fact that they ate dinners together as a family every night, a practice she regretfully acknowledged is on the decline in today’s fast-paced society. She believes that the act of sharing stories with and actively listening to one another at the dinner table helped to endow her with a strong sense of self and an appreciation of her cultural heritage. She feels that because she has been so blessed, it is her responsibility to give back to her family and community in any way she can. It was truly an inspiration to be in the booth with her.

StoryCorps was born in October of 2003 in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal. Since the inauguration of StoryCorps’ seminal StoryBooth, thousands of people have recorded conversations with their loved ones. For many the StoryBooth experience is love at first sight, or more aptly, love at first sensation. The experience is a series of unique sensations, from first reacting to the sight of an illuminated pod-like booth, to the distinct feeling of the outside world being vacuumed away with the closing “WHOOSH” of the giant sound proof door, to the final moments of an interview when you realize that 40 minutes really does pass a lot quicker then you thought. Perception of time tends to be lost as you surrender your senses to absorbing and sorting through memory. These sensations resonate with different people in very different ways, but whether the memories shared in the StoryBooth are pleasurable or painful, the experience is distinct. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week Sara McFadden brought her father, Jack McFadden, to the Nashville StoryBooth for a StoryCorps interview. Though visiting family in the states right now, Sara normally lives in Venezuela, where she teaches English as a second language. Sara told us that she and her adult ESL students listen to StoryCorps clips regulary via the StoryCorps website. Afterward, they discuss the interviews aloud to practice comprehension and spoken skills.

Sara is excited to share her StoryCorps experience with her students when she returns to Venezuela. She even took several StoryCorps buttons as souvenirs for her class.

Wanda Armstrong and her daughter, Ronda, recently visited the Nashville StoryBooth. Wanda’s dad and husband were both musicians and her daughter inherited their talent. During the interview, they harmonized on one of Wanda’s dad’s favorite songs, “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” Wanda fondly remembered how, after a gig, her dad would invite band members to their house. She loved hearing them play bluegrass tunes by Bill Monroe and Hank Williams, and remembered her father singing the song, “I Wish I was Single Again.”

On Saturday, March 22, Monroe Mayer visited the Lower Manhattan StoryBooth with his son Livian Mayer and Livian’s girlfriend, Petrina Palazzo, to discuss his coming of age in New York during WWII. Monroe is one of those real native New Yorkers who can recall not only watching the Twin Towers go down but also watching the George Washington Bridge go up. By 13, he was an air raid messenger who would scurry messages from police officials to the air raid wardens positioned around the city. He remembers the imposed blackouts and the miles of ships in the Hudson River. Monroe is a great storyteller too. Petrina keeps prompting him on with, “ooh, and tell that one.” He could go on and on, from being drafted in 1946, to getting the German measels, to even having to guard the German physicist Wernher Von Braun once he, along with 500 of his top rocket scientists, surrendered to the Americans. At 80, Monroe Mayer is still a practicing attorney and the national commander of the Jewish War Veterans of the USA. Monroe is a charming and humble man. Sharing these stories remind us that his story unfolds our shared history.

Virginia McCarthy’s earliest memory is overhearing her parents discuss bank closures at the brink of the Great Depression. Fortunately, the majority of her childhood memories growing up in 1930’s Chicago are rather pleasant. “I didn’t find the Depression so depressing,” Virginia told her daughter, Mary McCarthy, in a recent interview at the Nashville StoryBooth.

Virginia can still recall outdoor concerts at Garfield Park, playing in alleyways while collecting bottles for their two cent deposit, and sleeping outside with her father and siblings during hot summer nights. She even remembers attending the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.

“I had a wonderful life, ” she told her daughter at the end of the interview.

“Did you have fun talking about a little bit of it today?” Mary asked.

“Yes I did, because it reminds me of all the fun things we did… I enjoyed it tremendously.”

StoryCorps supporters and Alumni Catharine Wall and Mark Smith recently visited the Lower Manhattan StoryBooth to talk about her large New York family, to remember her own childhood growing up in and around New York City and, to honor those who have passed on.

Catharine previously interviewed her aunt Mary Catharine at the Grand Central Terminal StoryBooth, then her uncle Jim at the West MobileBooth in Santa Monica, California. She first listened to her CD as she drove to the airport headed to Mary Catharine’s funeral. Her uncle Jim eulogized her own mother and talked about growing up with his sister in the city. She wanted to bring her uncle Tommy with the strong Queens accent, but did not get the opportunity. This time she came with her husband, Mark. They shared memories of first impressions of the city, her colorful family, and stories from their own twenty-four years of marriage. He asked her what it is about her experience in our booths that compels her, and she simply said, “There’s something nostalgic about it for me…A nostalgia that pre-dates my own experience. It harkens back to some earlier, easier time.”

Three friends, Carolyn Butcher Perry, Karen Kledzik, and Phyllis Amerikaner, took a “girlfriend trip” to Nashville from Santa Barbara, California, to record a StoryCorps interview and also visit the Grand Ole Opry. Avid StoryCorps listeners, they wanted to record their antics to honor and celebrate their friendship. Their stories sparkled with memories of former adventures - from dressing like bag ladies for Menopause the Musical to marching in majorette boots in the Sweet Potato Queen parade. Phyllis’s “good morning song” to her daughter rocked the StoryBooth with laughter.

Sandra Hill Spruill (L) and her daugher, Molly Spruill (R), drove 250 miles last weekend – from Atlanta, Georgia to Nashville, Tennessee – to participate in a StoryCorps interview at the Nashville StoryBooth.

In their interview, Molly asked her mother to recall Molly’s maternal grandmother and great-grandmother, and to list the qualities of each that Sandra perceives in her own children today. This question sparked a thoughtful, intimate conversation between mother and daughter regarding family and the inevitable inheritance of our loved ones’ struggles as well as their strengths.

“This was such a great idea that you wanted to do this,” Sandra told Molly near the end of the interview. “We should do it again. . . . Next time I’ll interview you.”

Irene Popa never dreamed she would end up in Nashville, Tennessee. Born to a poor family in Bucharest, Romania, she learned to be a survivor at a young age. Her family was so destitute, they had to send her away to “weekly care” during the work week, bringing her home only on the weekends. Recently, Popa, a local Nashville aesthetician, came to the Nashville StoryBooth to share her story with her “soul sister,” Julianna Ericson. She told Ericson that she finally found a home with her grandmother, an herbalist, who served as her village’s healer and midwife. Popa’s grandmother, she recalled, taught her how to make herbal remedies and body care products, many of which she uses today at her face and body studio. She also imparted her wisdom, which guides Popa even today.

So said Storycorps participant Jihad Qasim during his Storycorps conversation with facilitator Soo Na Pak on Wednesday. This Harlem resident and dedicated dance man touched on his favorite style: “mambo with a swing twist, or swing with a mambo twist, I can’t seem to keep them apart” and how when Jihad was young, NYC ballrooms like The Savoy, The Audubon, and The Renaissance were spots where young people learned to get along, according to Jihad, with a respect for each other that “dancing naturally created.”

Jihad remembers the signal that a dance party was underway in Harlem during the 1960s: if he saw flashing lights in an apartment window on a Friday or Saturday he knew that a good time could be found within. It’s a bittersweet memory: Jihad theorized that those window lights were the ancestor of the disco ball, the central symbol of the form of dance that crowded ballroom out of Harlem in the 1970s, a void which, according to Jihad, contributed to social problems in Harlem and other neighborhoods. But Jihad sees signs that a ballroom comeback is starting in New York, and we hope that’s the case. Take that, disco! (Just kidding, we secretly love you too…)