Two of these participants are sisters Jessica Welch and Jennifer Theiss. Last week, they came into our booth to honor the life of their father, former State College Mayor William Welch, who passed away on September 4th, 2009. Mr. Welch was Mayor from 1994 until his death, winning his last re-election in 2007.  Before being Mayor, he served four years as a State College councilman. He was a graduate of Penn State University and lived most of his life in the area.

Jessica Welch and Jennifer Theiss, holding their father's self-portrait

Ms. Welch and Mrs. Theiss did not come to honor their father’s career in public service. They came to remember him as a family man with baby blue eyes, suspenders, and a Panama hat. Mr. Welch was an avid reader who took great pride in being perceived as intelligent. He was a friendly neighbor to Mrs. Theiss’s family. He was a devoted football fan (some of Ms. Welch’s most cherished memories are of watching football on her dad’s couch). And he was a very, very devoted – and well-dressed – stamp collector. When Mrs. Theiss was fourteen years old, he took her to a philately convention in Reno. Just a few years ago, accompanied by Ms. Welch, he attended an international convention in Colombia, where his collection received an award that Mr. Welch displayed proudly in his home.

Perhaps the thing Mr. Welch’s daughters remember him most for is his positivity. Mr. Welch’s kidneys failed sixteen years ago, and Ms. Welch donated one of her kidneys to save his life. His health continued to deteriorate over time, but, according to his daughters, he maintained an unwavering optimism. “I never heard him complain once,” said Mrs. Theiss.

In honor their father, the sisters planned to stay home and watch Penn State’s college football season opener, just like their father would have done.

Fort Wayne residents visit the MobileBooth on Opening Day

One of the stories that I have personally had the pleasure of facilitating is that of Don Derrow, who came in with his son Stuart to share his experience in the military. Mr. Derrow served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1951 to 1954. Unlike many of his peers, Mr. Derrow was not deployed to Korea. Instead, Mr. Derrow was sent to Europe, and after a three-month stay there, he was given a far more unique assignment: he was among the Marines who participated in Operation Tumbler-Snapper, an atomic bomb test that took place in the Nevada Proving Grounds in the Spring of 1952.

According to Mr. Derrow, he and his fellow Marines were stationed about 4.5 miles from the blast site (though he later heard they were actually a mere three miles), making them the human beings to be closest to an atomic explosion aside from the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They wore no special protective equipment aside from their uniforms. They were told to begin walking towards the blast site, a fake village built out of plywood and populated with dummies, as soon as they saw the light from the blast go off. Since light travels faster than sound, the sound waves hit them just as they left their foxhole. According to Mr. Derrow, “just like waves in the water, you could see the sound waves coming toward you.” Once at the blast site, the Marines observed the effects on the fake village and returned to be debriefed—and to be tested for radiation with a Geiger counter. Fortunately, he never tested positive.

The atomic blast aside, Mr. Derrow’s time at the Nevada Proving Grounds was rather uneventful. In fact, he had good reason to want to go home: he’d been married just ten days before being sent to Nevada. What did he do with the other Marines to pass the time? They played checkers while lying on the desert sand, though one of his more adventurous friends did go hunting for rattlesnakes.

Still, Mr. Derrow considers himself lucky to have been in Nevada instead of Korea. He believes that out of sixty men in his unit deployed to the Korean War, only twelve came back.

StoryCorps’ East MobileBooth is thrilled to be in Fort Wayne through July 31^st. Next, it will head to Central Pennsylvania. Visit our website for a complete list of StoryCorps booth locations.

Michael Doyle shared his 9/11 story at our MobileBooth in Chicago.

Born and raised in Queens, Michael never envisioned living anywhere but New York. He grew up loving the bustle and can-do attitude of his hometown, never cared to learn to drive, and as an adult felt he could never feel at home elsewhere. The traumatic events of September 11, 2001 changed that.

Participating in StoryCorps’ September 11th Initiative, open to those who wish to record their memories of 9/11, Michael recounted his experience on that day. He remembered finding out that a plane hit the North Tower while on a train from Brooklyn to Manhattan and slowly coming to grips with what was unfolding as he came into work in Midtown. With poignant detail, he described the scramble to get off the island of Manhattan and the arduous, anxious walk to safety in the outer boroughs, a walk carried out by tens of thousands of people.  After leaving for work the morning of September 11, Michael did not make it back to his apartment until September 13. By then, New York was a city in deep trauma, littered with flyers with the pictures of persons missing, and on the verge of profound changes.

According to Michael, he was deeply unsettled by the security build-up that ensued after the attacks. He noticed that, little by little, New York became what he saw as a fortified city, with more security cameras and machine gun-toting police. Despite the upsurge of pride and solidarity that permeated the city after 9/11, Michael was disturbed by a new sense of fear and suspicion.

This new New York made him uncomfortable, and he moved to Chicago in 2003. Michael said that it took him years to pin down just what had driven him out of the city and what attracted him to Chicago, but now he knows that Chicago has afforded him the sense of community and vitality that he had lost in New York – even if he still refuses to learn to drive a car.

Click here to learn more about StoryCorps’ September 11th Initiative, done in partnership with the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. To read Michael’s account of his StoryCorps experience, visit his blog, Chicago Carless.