LISTENING IS an ACT of LOVE Also by Dave Isay (coauthor) Holding On: Dreamers, Visionaries, Eccentrics, and Other American Heroes Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago Flophouse: Life on the Bowery Milton Rogovin: The Forgotten Ones The Penguin Press New York 2007 LISTENING IS an ACT of LOVE • • • • • • • • • A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project • • • • • • • • • Edited and with an Introduction by DAVE ISAY THE PENGUIN PRESS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England First published in 2007 by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright © Sound Portraits Productions, Inc., 2007 All rights reserved Photo credits: pp. 2, 4, 204—Christopher Weil, Chris Weil Photography; p. 253—Russ Berkman, Russ Berkman Photography; p. 289—Brett Myers, StoryCorps; all other photographs are property of Sound Portraits Productions, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Listening is an act of love : a celebration of American lives from the StoryCorps Project / edited and with an introduction by Dave Isay. p. cm. ISBN: 1-4295-5547-5 1. United States—Social life and customs—1945–1970—Anecdotes. 2. United States—Social life and customs—1971—Anecdotes. 3. United States—History—1945—Anecdotes. 4. National characteristics, American—Anecdotes. 5. United States—Biography—Anecdotes. 6. Interviews— United States. 7. Oral history. 8. StoryCorps (Project) I. Isay, David. II. 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This book is dedicated to the ten thousand pairs of participants— and counting—who have borne out our motto time and time again: Listening is an act of love CONTENTS Introduction 1 Author’s Note 5 • • • HOME AND FAMILY 7 WORK AND DEDICATION 53 JOURNEYS 101 HISTORY AND STRUGGLE 161 FIRE AND WATER 201 • • • The Story of StoryCorps 249 Afterword 267 Acknowledgments 273 StoryCorps Facilitators, 2003–06 279 Appendix: Favorite StoryCorps Questions 283 The essence of America lies not in the headlined heroes . but in the everyday folks who live and die unknown, yet leave their dreams as legacies. —Alan Lomax, 1940 LISTENING IS an ACT of LOVE INTRODUCTION toryCorps is built on a few Sbasic ideas: That our stories—the stories of everyday people—are as in- teresting and important as the celebrity stories we’re bom- barded with by the media every minute of the day. That if we take the time to listen, we’ll find wisdom, won- der, and poetry in the lives and stories of the people all around us. That we all want to know our lives have mattered and we won’t ever be forgotten. That listening is an act of love. Participating in StoryCorps is a simple process. First, you make an appointment to visit one of our recording booths. Bring anyone you choose—your grandmother, your dad, your LISTENING IS AN ACT OF LOVE StoryCorps booth in Grand Central Terminal sister, your best friend, the waitress at the local diner whose story you’ve always been curious about. A trained StoryCorps facilitator will greet you, take you into the booth, and shut the door. Inside, the booth is completely silent. The lights are low. The room is cozy. You sit at a small table across from, let’s say, your grandmother, looking into her eyes. There’s a micro- phone in front of each of you. The facilitator sits down in front of an audio console and presses Record. You begin to ask your questions: “What are the most important lessons you’ve learned in life?” 2 Introduction “What did your mother sing to you when you were a baby?” “How do you want to be remembered?” At the end of forty minutes, two broadcast-quality CDs have been created. One goes home with you. A second be- comes part of an archive at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress so that your great-great-grandchildren will someday be able to listen to the voices of you and your grandmother. Excerpts of interviews are broadcast each Friday on NPR’s Morning Edition. StoryCorps launched on October 23, 2003, in New York’s Grand Central Terminal. The great oral historian Studs Terkel, who was ninety-one at the time, flew in from Chicago to cut the ribbon. “Today we shall begin celebrating the lives of the uncelebrated!” he proclaimed. “We’re in Grand Central Sta- tion. We know there was an architect, but who hung the iron? Who were the brick masons? Who swept the floors? These are the noncelebrated people of our country. In this booth the noncelebrated will speak of their lives. It might be a grand- mother speaking to a grandchild. It might be a kid talking to his uncle. It might be a neighbor talking to a neighbor. And suddenly they will realize that they are the ones who have built this country!” Since that day we’ve added another permanent booth at Ground Zero and launched three mobile recording studios that travel the country year-round gathering stories. Each session represents an act of love and respect: forty minutes set aside to ask important questions and listen closely to the answers. The interviews honor our families, friends, and elders: the ordinary people we find all around us who, in their day-to-day acts of 3 LISTENING IS AN ACT OF LOVE kindness, courage, and humanity, embody the true spirit of our nation. StoryCorps is a project about permanence in an ever more disposable society. It reminds us of what’s really important in the midst of all of life’s distractions. It encourages us to con- nect despite endless temptations to detach and disengage. On the following pages are forty-nine stories selected from the ten thousand interviews we’ve recorded to date. We con- sider each StoryCorps session sacred, and we place great value on every story that’s been recorded as part of the project. It is a joy and an honor for all of us at StoryCorps to do this work, and it’s a privilege to share these stories with you. • • • 4 AUTHO R’S NOTE he following stories were Tedited from transcripts of forty-minute StoryCorps interviews. We aimed to distill these stories without altering the tone or meaning of the original sessions. Words and phrases that read well are not always the best spoken moments, and the reverse is also the case. As a re- sult, the phrasings of the same story in print and in audio may vary slightly. We did not use ellipses to indicate omitted text; at times tense and usage were changed for clarity. Each story was fact- checked. Participants gave permission for edited versions of their interviews to be published in this book. A few partici- pants requested that their ages not be included, and we hon- ored that request. • • • • • • • • • HOME and FAMILY • • • • • • • • • hen StoryCorps launched, WI wasn’t sure whether the interviews would resonate with anyone other than the partic- ipants and their families. I also suspected that we’d start hear- ing the same stories repeated over and over again. From the day we opened, I was taken by the power and uni- versality of the recordings coming out of the booth. Most StoryCorps interviews revolve around the three great themes of human existence—birth, love, and death—but from these themes emerge an astonishing array of stories. One day, about a year into the project, the senior producer for StoryCorps, Sarah Kramer, came up to me and said, “You know, the longer the project runs, the better the stories seem to get.” Her words remain true to this day. LISTENING IS AN ACT OF LOVE CYNTHIA RAHN, 48, interviewed by her friend ADRIENNE LEA, 47 recorded in durham, north carolina Cynthia Rahn: I lived very far out in the country, and I had just started kindergarten with a lot of kids from town that I didn’t know. We had an assignment to bring in either a toy or a stuffed animal or something you found in your barn so that we could create a barnyard diorama. I was a little shy and insecure because I knew I was from out in the country and probably looked poor to everybody else, and certainly every- body else looked rich to me.