Jose Alicia came to StoryCorps recently to reflect on his past and look forward into his future. In the 1980’s, Jose’s family was living in New York City and times were tough. His parents’ relationship was under strain. Money was short. The crack epidemic was in full swing. In an effort to help his family get by, teen-aged Jose got into the drug game.

A member of the Yellow Top Crew, one of the most violent gangs in their territory, Jose started out small moving drugs. But he eventually started working as hired muscle where the money was better. That’s when trouble really started for Jose. Drugs, killings, kidnappings, shootouts. “It was like a movie, but it was real,” remembered Jose. After a series of arrests and convictions, Jose finally caught a rap that landed him in prison for a 9 year stretch.

When Jose was released from prison in 2007, he barely even recognized New York City. “I thought I was someplace else getting off the bus. I thought 42nd street was Walt Disney. Trains talk, buses talk. It didn’t even smell like New York,” said Jose. Two years later, he’s still adapting to living life as a regular citizen. “It’s still new to me. I still see myself in the [prison] yard. Physically I’m not there, but mentally I’m in prison.”

Jose tries not to dwell on the past. Pointing to the word “Hym” tattooed in script letters on his neck, he explained, “That’s who [I] used to be. Jose is who I am today. Either you can get with it, or you can forget it man.” Glad to be home, glad to be thinking positively, he sandpapered the tear-drop tattoo under his left eye that marked him as a member of the YTC. “I said, ‘To hell with it. Just start from the bottom, work my way up, and start a new slate.’”

Jose currently works in construction as a Project Manager. He has four children. “I wake up for them every day, and say, ‘I’m gonna be here for them.’ I prefer to be in prison certain times because of the pressure of today,” Jose admitted. But towards the end of his interview, he added, “I woke up and said, ‘If you were man enough to stand up in the street and you were man enough to stand up in jail, then you’re man enough to be a father.’ Before, I couldn’t take that.”

When Earl Reynolds, Jr. visited the StoryCorps MobileBooth, he told his daughter Ashley about the day the James Brown Revue came to Roanoke, VA. A caravan of 15 buses and close to 200 people stopped in front the family barbershop where Reynolds was a bootblack, or shoeshine boy. After stopping at the neighboring record store to check up on his newest single, The King of Funk himself walked into the Reynolds’ barbershop.

After shaking hands all around, James Brown took a seat on the stand and asked Reynolds to give him a shine. Although he was immaculate from head to toe, Reynolds dutifully re-shined his shoes. When Mr. Brown stepped down from the stand, he told Reynolds that he himself had started out shining shoes. He assured Reynolds that it was an honorable profession, and good work, but encouraged him to think about what he might want to do next. On his way out of the barbershop, Mr. Brown handed Reynolds a five spot. “I thought I had died and gone to heaven,” Reynolds recalled.

Although he was too young at the time to go see James Brown do his thing, their brief interchange stuck with him. His father had hoped he would take over the barbershop, but Reynolds instead decided to attended Fairfield State Teacher’s College where he graduated at the top of his class. He still lives in Roanoke today, where he is a community activist.

Alisa Guthrie, 30, brought her husband Christopher Cogle, 36, to the StoryCorps MobileBooth and interviewed him about living with Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy.

Christopher explained that as a student in medical school he learned he could die suddenly of his type of muscular dystrophy. However, thanks to his heart donor, he has about another 30 years to raise a family with Alisa and continue putting his medical expertise to work with his cancer patients.

When asked about meeting Alisa for the first time, Christopher recalled, “I was instantly in love with you. I actually felt like it was irresponsible of me because I didn’t want you to hang your hat on someone who wasn’t going to live.”

Alisa assured Christopher that she wouldn’t want it any other way responding. “I don’t see it as a burden. I feel like I live fully and wholly with you. I thank you for that.”

When the East MobileBooth stopped in Buffalo, New York this past summer, Jennifer Gayles, 31, came to listen to her mother Diane Gayles, 58, tell childhood stories. Having grown up on a farm, Diane had quite a few to tell.

On one occasion, Mrs. Gayles was playing in the bed of an old pickup truck when her brother shouted for her to run. Suspecting a trick, she was unmoved by her brother’s increasingly insistent pleas. However, when he took off at top speed himself, she figured the situation required further investigation.

When Diane looked up, she saw a bull charging straight at her. “As he came up in the bed of the truck, I went over the cab,” she recalled. Running hard and fast for home, she escaped the bull and a near collision with an apple tree before slamming the backdoor behind her.

The bull, whose horns came right through the backdoor, was not as lucky.

Diane’s mother, not a woman to be intimidated, came out of the house and gave the bull a piece of her mind and her broomstick. She would have liked to have ended the bull’s charging days right on the spot, but as a mother she knew the value of both discipline and mercy, so she promptly called the neighbor farmer and gave him the opportunity to retrieve his errant bull.

Throughout the rest of the conversation it was evident that Diane has inherited her mother’s lively spirit, and is passing it on to Jennifer.

On Monday, November 17th, the Lower Manhattan StoryBooth opened its doors to the public, inviting area organizations and passersby to learn more about the StoryCorps project and tour the StoryBooth.

Visitors were offered donut holes, hot cider, and literature on StoryCorps and our upcoming National Day of Listening. Eight inviteesóthe Museum of Chinese in America, South Street Seaport Museum, National Parks Service, African Burial Ground, Tsingtao, Charles Wang Health Center, Eldridge Street Synagogue, NYPDóand about four times as many curious pedestrians stopped long enough to hear a StoryCorps pitch, add their names to our mailing list, and treat their ears to some New York stories. We witnessed the fruits of our labor right away when a NYC Parks & Recreation employee was spotted spreading the word to people on the opposite side of the park.

One of the greatest rewards for me as a StoryCorps Facilitator has been the opportunity to soak up the wisdom and insight shared between the four walls of our StoryBooths. While sitting in the corner, taking notes, running the recording equipment, and listening closely, I hear stories that help me better understand my own life, and prepare me for experiences that are still aheadó marriage, parenthood, serious illness, or even the death of a family member. So, it was a delight to be a fly on the wall when Natalia Karplus, who is expecting twins, brought her mother Elena to ask her questions about parenting and motherhood.

Elena’s savoir faire and love as a mother were made evident through stories from her four pregnancies, memories of raising three girls and a boy, and this bit of wisdom, “Sometimes you’re so task oriented with a baby that you forget that they just like to be talked to.”

“I feel so lucky to be going through this, and have you to talk to about it,” said Natalia through her end-of-interview tears. To which her mother responded, “It’s going to be empowering. It will make you feel like you can do anything in the worldó and you can.”

Anita LaFond-Korsonsky and her mother, Dina LaFond, recently visited our Lower Manhattan StoryBooth to remember her sister, Jeanette LaFond-Menichino, who worked in tower one on the 94th floor of the World Trade Center.

Anita described her sister as someone who could do whatever she set her mind to. With little higher education, Jeanette managed to work her way up to Senior Account Analyst at Guy Carpenter, a subsidiary of Marsh McLennan. “I don’t know how she did it. It was just an amazing, wonderful little piece of life that she made for herself,” Anita remarked.

Reflecting on her sister’s connection to New York and the Twin Towers, Anita said, “New York is an amazing place, and she loved it so much. Her world was Brooklyn, it was New Yorkó everything she had was here. Working in the World Trade Center was like the ultimate New York experience for her.”

As a mother, Dina was not as enthusiastic. “I hated those Twin Towers. Oh, I hated them! I kept telling her, ‘Jeanette, please get another job.’ But she says, ‘Okay, maybe next year.’ But it never happened,’” she told Anita.

The view from the 94th floor was so extraordinary that Jeanette always kept a camera at her desk. The pictures she snapped were inspiration for her landscape paintings, a favorite pastime of hers. Dina recalled, “Being up so high, sometimes the clouds would come right up to her window, and sometimes there would be rain clouds. And you could actually see the rain falling, and if you looked above the clouds there was no rain there at all.”

“She would say that getting up to the 94th floor took as long as commuting on the subway,” added Anita. “But we always used to laugh, ‘What would be the point of working on the 40th floor of the World Trade Center? You might as well work on the 40th floor of any other building.’ I guess you don’t think about the place you work in being the place you’re going to die in.”

As their conversation came to a close, mother and daughter shared thoughts of what losing Jeanette has meant for them.

“She was four years younger than I was. I never expected to lose her at this point in our lives. I kind of feel like an only childó all of a sudden she’s not there,” Anita said.

Dina explained that the loss of her daughter is something she feels everyday.

“Sometimes, I get that lonely feeling that I want to hug her. And I tell myself, ‘My God, I’ll never be able to do that!’ And you get that motherly feeling that you want to hug her just one more time. It’s a continuous heartache. It never really leaves your body. She is always with me.”

Dina leads tours for visitors to Ground Zero and says that the experience has helped in her grieving process. Anita has never revisited the site of the Twin Towers, but instead prefers to look out towards Manhattan from across the water at Eagle Rock Reservation’s 9/11 memorial, where she brings cards and flowers for her sister.

84-year-old Gloria Riggin recently visited our Lower Manhattan StoryBooth with her daughter, Patricia. Gloria shared stories of her time in the WAVES, a World War II-era women’s division of the Navy. “I felt that if the men could go to war, why couldn’t women?” Gloria said. At the age of 20, she joined the WAVES, whose members were able to hold the same rank and ratings as their male counterparts.

Gloria trained in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she says the whole town turned out to watch the female recruits exercising on the town’s college campus. She went on to serve as a storekeeper in the Navy, giving up her old job of $50 a week for just $50 a month.

After the war ended, Gloria got married. Since she was still a WAVE, she had to receive special permission from her commanding officer to wear a bridal gown. She got the permission, and family and friends gave their ration coupons for sugar so that a wedding cake could be made. Gloria was married and ended her service in the WAVES shortly after.

“I think that was one war that everyone wanted to do something to help. And I was really so excited about going in the WAVESó I felt like I was doing something,” Gloria remarked. She still has her uniform, and is happy to see the increased level of service women are making alongside men today.

On July 18, 2008, just hours after taking their marriage vows at City Hall, Alexandra Budny and Steven Ketcham came to our Lower Manhattan StoryBooth to commemorate the day with a recording for future generations of their family.

The pair met for the first time when Steve helped Ali’s mother move into the home his father had just moved out of. Ali’s mother had more foresight than anyone else. When she first met Steve, she told him, “My name is Nadia, I’m going to be your future mother-in-law.” A week later, Steve and Ali were dating. Six years and two months lateróafter supporting each other through both their parents’ deathsóthey are living in the same home where they first met, and where they hope to grow gray together. “I would be very happy living there. That house is important,” said Ali.

“It’s how we met and it’s what binds us,” said Steve. “What I see is you completely gray, with wrinkles, but still looking beautiful, still having that charm. I’m going to be gray as well, with a big round belly and I probably will have shrunk a couple inches. And just sitting there chatting, looking out on our yard.”

As their forty minutes in the booth wound down, Ali commented, “We have a very interesting story and I hope that it continues to surprise us.”

Congratulations Steve and Ali!

_{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.