After two years on the road with StoryCorps, 20 cities visited, and more than 800 interviews recorded, I’ve heard that statement many times.  I’ve heard it from all kinds of people in all kinds of places, and no matter how tired or cranky or overwhelmed by the events of the day, I always agreed with whoever made that declaration.

Being a Mobile Facilitator for StoryCorps means many things: lots of travel, lots of explaining, and LOTS of listening.  I had an inkling of what I was in for when I started with StoryCorps in the summer 2008.  However, I decided early on to be open to what would be a very surprising journey.

I was surprised by how many dinner invitations my co-workers and I received in every city.  I ate more homemade pie in the six weeks I was in Buffalo, N.Y., then I had eaten in my previous 33 years on the planet.  I also found that my life is way more interesting when I listen to people who are much older and much younger than me.  I listened to a second grader talk about the meaning of life, and learned how to do the Electric Slide from a 90-year-old retired educator.

I was surprised at how nervous many people were about talking when they first came into the MobileBooth.  Then, once the conversation started, I was surprised at how generous my participants were with the intimate details of their lives, their hopes and fears, their greatest losses and their greatest loves.

I was surprised by how many of my participants’ conversations are archived in my memory as well as the Library of Congress.  Recording one story of a husband and wife in Salt Lake City, UT, reminded me of an equally hilarious couple I met in Roanoke, VA.  Hearing one participant’s childhood recollection of being called home for dinner at dusk brought back another man’s vivid description of seeing a starry night for the first time after seven years of imprisonment.

With all due respect to all those people who told me time and again how great my job is, the truth is, despite all the very hard work of listening, the past two years never once felt like a job.

And for that, I have them to thank.

Clifford Hampton and Kuantau Reeder have been incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary 51 years and 17 years, respectively.  They discussed the choices and circumstances that brought them to prison, how their outlook has changed since their incarceration, and their hopes for the future. They also discussed punishment, redemption and forgiveness.

Maurice Rabalais and his mother, Dora Rabalais, talked about what it is like living, working and raising a family at Angola Prison. The Rabalais family has lived and worked at Angola Prison for three generations. Maurice and Dora talked about the closeness of the community of employees at Angola. Maurice spoke of how he feels at home as soon as he sees the Louisiana Penitentiary sign at the gates to the prison and that when he helps a co-worker at Angola it is likely he’s also helping a neighbor.

Lane Nelson and Gary Tyler discussed their shared experiences — first living as prisoners on death row, and then, after their release, working in the prison’s hospice program. Lane remembered shaking hands with men walking down the hall on death row to be executed. He couldn’t help but contemplate his own death. Now Lane and Gary help others face death, as volunteers in hospice. They take pride in their work, particularly when patients specifically request them to be their hospice volunteers. They have sat with many people as they passed. Lane remembers one patient who kept hanging on to life long enough to see his family. After the family’s last visit, Lane told him he was free to go, and he closed his eyes and was gone.

Assistant Warden Joe Lamartiniere talked about his work in Angola and his experiences evacuating prisoners from New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Joe is now Assistant Warden at Angola and leader of the prison’s tactical team. He led the evacuation of Jefferson Parish and New Orleans Jails during Katrina. His team started with the ground level and watched the water rise by the levee. He cut a hole in the metal wall to open the jail and evacuate the inmates. On their final day in New Orleans they evacuated the officers and their families. In his 18 years in corrections Joe has met a lot of inmates, and is often recognized in jails and prisons that he visits.

Additional participants at Angola included Robert M. Tycer  and Johnny Bert Dixon; Donald Humble and Ray Jones; Edrick Jenkins; Kerry Myers; Kevin Seward and Stephan Ross Proctor; Ron C. Hicks and Donald R. Biermann; Ronnie J. Fruge and Wanda Fruge; and Bert Dixon.

We’d like to thank the staff and inmates of the Louisiana State Penitentiary for welcoming us and sharing their stories. Special thanks also to Whitney Henry-Lester, Lillie Love and Mitra Bonshahi for contributing to this post.

Caregiver Denise Hall used her interview as an opportunity to tell Lena Anderson just how much she appreciates Lena’s sense of humor and all the fun she brings to Greenwalt during her visits. Caregiver Roslyn Buggage accompanied Kathy Roland to her recording, which just happened to take place on Kathy’s 65th birthday. Finally, Becky Rousseau and her mother Doris rounded out the day with stories about Doris’ love of softball and how the sport not only kept her in great shape, but also led her to marry Elmo Rousseau, her former coach.

Amanda Miller and Scott Greenberg met at the party of a mutual friend. Amanda had just returned from the Czech Republic and was not looking for a relationship, but Scott was not daunted, he wooed her until they became “official” three months later. The true test of the relationship came a few years later when the couple moved to Miami and had to manage job searches, law school, and living on a tight budget in an expensive city. “It was easy for the relationship between [Amanda] and me,” says Scott. “It was just the external circumstances that were difficult and we teamed up and made it through.” Amanda agreed, “That was the hardest point for me, but I think that it was the best time too because it was when I actually realized that when things did get hard we were going to be fine.” Amanda and Scott get hitched on April 10, 2010.

When Penny Steffens first met Melissa Featherstone she thought, “OOOOH! I can’t stand her!” Melissa thought Penny looked at the world through rose-colored glasses, but eventually, with the help of their mutual friend Pearl, the two got to know each other a little better and started going on sailing adventures and beach excursions. Now those rose-colored glasses are one of the things that Melissa loves about Penny the most. “We had no idea that we had a future together beyond friendship,” says Melissa. Penny and Melissa say “I do” on June 11, 2010.

After meeting at a photo shoot, disc jockey Dallas Peel and journalist Keri Holt had a very rocky start to their relationship. Dallas served as the model for the photo shoot and Keri wrote the article that accompanied the photos. She misspelled Dallas’s name in the article and when he discovered the error he told the listeners of his radio show that he would give a pair of  concert tickets to the first person who identified the mistake. Apparently there was more than one mistake, which led to heavy criticism of the article on the air. Keri fought back in a fiery response article, and the war was on. After a few weeks of battling over the air waves and via the printed word, Dallas offered an olive branch and asked Keri and her coworkers to a conciliatory dinner at an Italian restaurant. Keri’s coworkers bowed out at the last minute but Keri forged ahead. It was over dinner that Keri and Dallas buried the hatchet and on June 26, 2010 they’ll be tying the knot.

Opening day was hosted by both First United Methodist Church and our friends at WUWF  88.1 FM and featured guest speakers Nancy Fetterman, a community activist and coordinator of the Public History program at the University of West Florida (UWF), and UWF Associate Professor of History, Dr. Patrick Moore. Both speakers shared their thoughts on the value of telling stories and the impact the practice has made on their lives and on the communities in which they have worked.

In one of the first interviews of the day, Lusharon Wiley talked with her friend, Reverend H.K. Matthews, about his life-long activism. Rev. Matthews began his contribution to Pensacola’s Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s as president of the Pensacola Council of Ministers. After staging protests for civil rights, Rev. Matthews was jailed as a political prisoner. Decades after those protests, in February of 2006, his struggles were acknowledged when a park was dedicated in his name to recognize the social changes that he helped to bring to Pensacola.

For the second story of the day, Charles Morgan III interviewed his mother, Camille W. Morgan, about the stand that she and her husband, Charles “Chuck” Morgan Jr., made in the South during the 1960s. Chuck, who passed away in January 2009, was a leading civil rights lawyer who won a landmark lawsuit that helped establish the so-called ‘one-person-one-vote’ rule, giving African Americans more equitable representation in legislative districts. Camille talked about how she and Chuck were threatened with violence by other white people in the South and how he never let those threats deter him from speaking out against discrimination and against the institutions that were complicit in the racist oppression of the time.

Tricia Jones came to the MobileBooth with her mother Gen Fields and talked about some of her favorite memories. “I will always remember us dancing because I can’t dance with anybody else the way I can dance with you,” said Tricia. “It was really special for me to get to, unscripted, unplanned, get to dance with you at my wedding party. It was a big party, but you know, it was awesome to have the opportunity to dance with you and get you to show your stuff and twirl me around the floor and make me look damn good!”

“You’re very good,” said Gen.

“Only because of you,” said Tricia.

Jeanna Houston came to the MobileBooth with her sister Connor Barnas to commemorate what Connor calls “the most stellar, fabulous, profound sister-sibling relationship that exists on the planet.”

Jeanna recalled her own wedding. “At [my] wedding we had the first dance together instead of husband and wife. It was the two of us and we danced to Steely Dan’s Babylon Sisters. It was special.”

“One of the things we’ve always said is that we’ve traveled through many lives together,” says Connor. “This is our karmic payoff. That we get a perfect relationship: one that is based so much in love and friendship and respect.”

“He was happiest a couple of thousand feet off the ground” says Michael Berg.

“He started his business, which he called Prometheus Methods Tower Service Incorporated, because Prometheus was the god who brought fire.” says Michael. Nick was in the business of building and repairing radio towers. He traveled widely, and often offered his services to poor communities in developing countries like Uganda and Kenya, Michael remembered.

“He developed this little company from that to one that employed five people.” said Michael. “He was entrepreneurial, but he was not interested in money except as a means of furthering his charity. I’ve always said that the child was father of the man. I often looked to Nick because he just had it so all together and I just, I really wanted to be more like him.”

Michael Berg

It was during Nick’s second trip to war-torn Iraq, as an independent contractor helping to repair and build radio towers, that he was abducted. Nick was in Mosul, in the northern part of the country, when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal became public. “It so enraged the citizenry of Iraq,” said Michael. “It changed the whole texture of the war.”

Days before the scandal broke, Nick had been detained by military police and was finally released after being held for thirteen days.  He  began traveling from Mosul back to Baghdad, with the intent of returning to the United States. “He calls us on the phone and he tells us that everything is okay, that he’s going to get out as quickly as he can but that he’s not going to do anything rash and take a route that would be dangerous.”

“I remember telling him to ‘Stay low.’ That was one of the things he always said, ‘Stay low.’ I remember him telling me a lot of different routes he might take instead of the direct route which he ended up taking,” recalled Michael. “I didn’t want to get into, you know, saying ‘I love you.’ I didn’t want to say anything at this point because I felt like it’s like saying ‘I’m afraid I may never see you again.’ Maybe he felt the same way. I don’t know.”  That was the last time Michael spoke with Nick.

Michael was notified about Nick’s death by the U.S. State Department and he grappled with whether or not to share the details of Nick’s execution with his family. “When [my friend] heard the news about Nick I told him what I hadn’t told anyone yet about how Nick was killed and that I hadn’t told my wife and kids.” Michael’s friend encouraged him to tell his family and an hour after he told them, the video of Nick’s execution was broadcast on the Internet.

When I asked Michael what he would like to say to and about Nick, his reply was simple, “To Nick, I would like to say the ‘I love you’ that I didn’t say on April 9th when he called home. To know Nick was to know a unique individual, a real one-of-a-kind person who was a creative genius and wanted to harness that creative genius to help whoever was in need.”

Special thanks to Lilly Sullivan and Nina Porzucki.

After helping Lisa remove her first tooth, Lenoir sat Lisa down and explained that the Tooth Fairy would be on her way to collect the tooth as Lisa slept, and that she would leave a quarter in its place. Lisa showed the tooth to her older sister Vicki before dutifully placing the tooth under her pillow, climbing into bed, and drifting off to sleep. The next morning Lisa woke up, reached under the her pillow and found that her tooth was still there. Lisa ran to her parents and held out her hand with the tooth in it.

“Mama started to say something and Daddy just threw his hand out and stopped me and said ‘Lisa, ‘Ray’ is at the end of the alphabet. The Tooth Fairy must have been really busy last night. You’ve got to go back to bed and you’ve got to go to sleep now!’”

Lisa ran back to bed and tried to force herself go to sleep until she actually started to doze off.

“I heard these heavy footsteps coming across the floor,” said Lisa. “I thought, don’t fairies fly?” She felt a large hand slide under her pillow and then heard the footsteps cross back to the door. “I just had to look. I saw the back of a bald head that looked just like my Dad’s.”

The door shut then Lisa reached under her pillow and found her quarter. Right at that moment Vicki came into the room.

“Vicki, I don’t think there is a Tooth Fairy,” said Lisa. “I think it’s Daddy.”

Lisa explained what she had seen and Vicki responded, “Well, that wasn’t Daddy, Lisa. That was the Gentle Giant. He helps the Tooth Fairy when she is busy!”

Our friends at 89.5 FM not only set up a huge banner over Waterside Drive announcing our arrival, but they also provided music and food for guests at our opening day. Of course, the best part of any opening day is the stories we hear from our participants.

Brenda H. Andrews interviewed her friend Andrew I. Heidelberg about his experiences as one of the Norfolk 17,  the first group of  black students to attend previously white schools during desegregation in Virginia. One day, when 12 year-old Andrew was coming home for dinner, there were two women and a man from the NAACP at his family’s home. They wanted to recruit Andrew in their efforts to get African-American students into recently desegregated schools. Andrew agreed to participate but had no idea what to expect. Months later at age 13 was his first day at Norview High School. Despite the tremendous prejudice he faced on a daily basis from white students at Norview, he knew he would graduate. “I didn’t want to let them make me quit,” he said.

A tale of triumph over a different kind of adversity came from Ray Evans who spoke with his daughter Debra Matthews about what it was like to be a child evacuee in England during World War II. His separation from his family found him in foster home after foster home, some of them warm and loving and others awful and abusive. Ray also talked about the bittersweet moment when he had to leave his final foster home—a wonderful, caring place—to return to his family.

Mr. Heidelberg summed up the message of both stories when he said, “Quitters never win and winners never quit!”

Chris was born with a condition called V.A.T.E.R. Syndrome which has compromised the health of his kidneys and led to two surgeries and frequent infections throughout all of his 18 years. While Chris has not had the benefit of a mutant power to help him through the lifelong challenges of his condition, he has had his own kind of healing factor: the love and support of his family, which includes his mom, Jennifer Murray, and his grandmother, Anna Armstrong, who accompanied him into the MobileEast Booth.

Chris’ love of heroes with complex personalities, like Wolverine, the Incredible Hulk, and Spiderman speaks to his own belief that the good and the bad sometimes go hand in hand. “There is darkness in everything, in everybody, but within the darkness there is a glimmer of light,” says Chris. “If you can find that light you can help it shine. I think the light is what we all call faith. If you just believe in it the darkness will go away.”