Can you do the Chicano Clap? No? Well, StoryCorps knows a few folks out West you can give a call…

KJZZ on-air personality Marcos Najera shared the StoryCorps experience with his parents, Ascencion “Sonny” Najera and Yolanda Najera, and his godmother, Rosie López. Earlier that day, Yolanda and Rosie marched with other locals in Phoenix, Arizona’s Stop the Hate March. Led by the National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON), one of this peaceful demonstration’s goals was to raise public awareness of the need for immigrants’ rights and equal opportunities.

The morning’s activities sparked the Najera’s afternoon conversation, bringing about memories of similar demonstrations in the 1960s and 1970s when Sonny, Rosie, and Yolanda, all long-time friends, attended Arizona State University. This was during the early days of Chicanos por La Causa, an equal rights advocacy organization that Sonny initiated and helped name. Looking back on his years of activism, Sonny says, “We live in a world of many races. So, we have to be ready to help everybody. That, to me, is my goal.”

These veteran crusaders also remembered the emergence of Chicano as a term of political and national identity and shared stories of their parents’ opposition to (and eventual embracement of) the movement in a talk that showed the value of inter-generational communication and storytelling. “My mother became involved because of us,” Rosie remembers. “She just began to accept it.” Soon after, Rosie’s mother could be seen marching side-by-side with her daughter, proudly clapping and calling herself Chicana.

“To hear you guys talk about that is what is starting to make me want to reclaim the term Chicano for myself and for my own generation,” Marcos told his family. “It’s that spirit.” And that spirit—that activist’s passion and enthusiasm—is sure to live on in Phoenix for years to come.

In Melbourne, word of mouth was a magical thing, on our last day of recording we met England native Geraldine Condon, who was brought to Joe’s Club by her daughter and son after reading of our visit in Florida Today.

Some of Geraldine’s favorite memories took place in Kent, England, where she remembers time spent with family on St. Margaret Bay at her grandmother’s home. Later, during World War II, amid the fighting and her travels as a nurse with Queen Victoria’s Nursing Service in the Bradford Royal Infirmary, the possibility of happiness outside England serendipitously made itself known.

After numerous assignments throughout the United Kingdom and North Africa, Geraldine was sent to Rome, Italy. “It was there I met a certain American Army officer, and we clicked,” she remembers. “Jack G. Condon.” Geraldine and Jack’s first date and engagement (and having six children!) were a blur, she says, but she will always remember Rome because her marriage to Jack was the first to take place in the war-torn city after the American troops’ arrival.

Following the war, Geraldine moved to the United States to build a life with her new husband. In looking back at the different path her life took, Geraldine is able to find the good in the events of war. “Maybe because of the war we found it far easier to adjust than people who didn’t have that experience. We were sort of inured by the experiences we’d had and were inclined to accept things,” she says. “I think the war helped us to have an open mind.” And an open heart.

Geraldine is pictured with two of her six children, John Condon and Katrina Dugan.

After decades of teaching and administrative work at Bethlehem University and Donnelly College, Sr. Paula retired from education in 1999. When asked how she’d like to spend her retirement, Sr. Paula said in passing that she’d always had the urge to paint and began taking art classes at her community’s Sofia Center. “I’d been listening to Bob Ross on television, and seeing him do these happy little trees, I kept thinking, ‘That looks really easy.’”

In the following months Sr. Paula experimented with different types of art forms but painting, indeed, stuck. What drew her closest to this method was the creation of icons, or storytelling through pictures of sacred characters and images.

Sr. Paula’s early work in iconography focused on the image of Our Lady of Tenderness, a depiction of the Virgin Mary embracing the Child. Our Lady of Tenderness is Sr. Paula’s most recreated work and is one she holds closest to her heart. “It was the first one I made all by myself without a teacher, so it’s special.”

As she gained more skill in iconography, Sr. Paula began attracting nationwide attention. One client, a Carmelite nun from Alaska, commissioned Sr. Paula to create the official icon of the Alaskan Carmelite order, Our Lady of the Midnight Sun. Today, the Benedictine sisters at Mount St. Scholastica have given Sr. Paula her own workshop, where she has created over 170 icons for friends, families, and other religious groups.

Throughout the afternoon, eight conversations were recorded on four StoryKits, affectionately known as our “recording studio in a briefcase,” between those living with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia and their family members and friends. A mother told her son of her part in the World War II war effort as an inspector for a parachute factory. A husband and wife remembered the family portrait drawn for them by their son. A niece chatted with her aunt about how she’d like to be remembered by the rest of their family. The scope of discussions was as bright and diverse as MoMA’s collection of pop art, and continued well after the recorders were stopped, spilling into its Metropolitan Garden reception.

Since 2006, StoryCorps’ Memory Loss Initiative has collected hundreds of recordings to support and encourage people with memory loss to share their stories. Our collaboration with MoMA was an innovative first for both organizations, whose programming invites the participation of Alzheimer’s groups and populations by providing much-needed creative space and flexibility. Hopefully, this is only the beginning.

To reserve your StoryKit through our Memory Loss Initiative, visit us at www.storycorps.org/initiatives/mli.

Remember the days when children were born in hospitals for less than the arm-and-a-leg charged today? Well, technically, Phyllis Hart doesn’t either, but during her visit to StoryCorps, she proudly displayed her proof from 1925.

The StoryCorps Door-to-Door team has had quite a busy February, with the completion of its first month-long Door-to-Door event sponsored by Florida Hospital in Orlando, FL. With eighteen hospitals located throughout the state, 2009 marks Florida Hospitals’ centennial celebration, and as a gift to its employees and local community, StoryCorps was brought in to record a story for every year of the institution’s history.

One-hundred stories in a month? Mission accomplished – and then some! Of the 108 stories shared, Phyllis’ family memories of her 1925 birth in the formerly named Florida Sanitarium are quite remarkable. “I don’t remember it, of course, but I have pictures of the building. It was like a framed house, very small.” Seeing Phyllis’ mother’s hospital bill made it that more memorable:

14 days’ room and board – $75

10 meals – $7.75

Tray service – $0.60

Physician service – $15.00

Medicine and supplies – $05.17

The total cost of Phyllis’ world debut: $103.52.

Now 83 years old, Phyllis misses more than the cheap price tag on childbirth. “Wouldn’t that be nice? When you have a baby you have two weeks just to lay there.” she says.

Friends and hospital employees Avis Taylor and Terry Baldwin sat down with StoryCorps and likened the unity they felt among their staff at Memorial Hospital to the harmony they felt in the South Bend of their childhoods. Both women are South Bend natives and have seen their share of local changes over the years, particularly the comings and goings of local businesses.

One former business owner remembered was “Grandma” or Beatrice Wilder, Terry’s grandmother by marriage. Beatrice was one of South Bend’s first African-American businesses owners and owned a small string of hotels and restaurants in the 1950s and 1960s, most notably the Wilder Hotel and the Liston Street Hotel. A legendary cook in both her family and the community, Beatrice’s legacy is her skill at the stove, according to Terry. “She could turn an empty fridge into a three-course meal.” Ever since Beatrice’s death, Terry says, “I took a combination of her cooking skills and my great-grandmother who raised me, and I started cooking. And I’ve been cooking ever since.”

Opened in 1921 by Founder Duncan Phillips, Washington, D.C.’s Phillips Collection is America’s oldest museum of modern art, and during our visit we toured the museum’s extensive collection that is still mostly housed in its founder’s 1897 Georgian Revival home. What makes The Now so special for the museum is that its walls are now the temporary home of African-American artist Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series. Told through vivid patterns and brilliant colors, Lawrence’s series is the first to narrate the 20th-century exodus of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North. The Phillips Collection only owns the odd numbers of Lawrence’s series, but for the first time in years the entire 60-panel series is on view at the museum until October 26, 2008.

Pictured above with his favorite piece in the collection is Chris Celauro, the Phillips Collection’s Jacob Lawrence Education Project Coordinator, who gives new meaning to “taking your work home with you.” Chris says that hanging over his bed is a print of Lawrence’s painting No. 57, an image of an African-American woman hunched hard at work, whose description reads ‘The female workers were the last to arrive north’.

For Chris: “The figure in the painting represents a universal symbol of strength. As the caption depicts, African-American women were the last to leave the South during the Great Migration. Those who stayed in the South needed courage, perseverance, and strength to stay behind and survive the violence, discrimination, segregation, and Jim Crow Laws. For me, this panel stands as symbol for all people who are facing adversity to never give up and stand strong in the search for a better life.” Panel No. 57 is a reminder of strength with which Chris begins each day.

Contributing to oral history, the Phillips Collection brought StoryCorps to Washington to gather the migration stories of the museum’s patrons and employees. During our weekend, graduate student and museum volunteer Taye Akinola shared his own migration story, describing his life as a deaf person and his frightening move alone from Houston, Texas to Washington, D.C. to StoryCorps facilitator Kate Brown. Taye remembers his migration as one that pushed him to make the first adult decision of his life: Despite his parents’ objections, Taye moved away from home to pursue higher education at Gallaudet University, a school whose programs cater to the deaf and hard of hearing. Although the move was a difficult one for Taye without his parents’ support, he is thankful for the growth that he and even his parents have seen in him as a person. Taye is now a graduate student at Gallaudet with a concentration in deaf studies, and he hopes to make the art world a bit more inclusive of the deaf, a population that primarily operates visually.

StoryCorps stayed closer to home last Thursday and visited the Arab American Association of New York in Brooklyn. Under the leadership of Co-founder and Board President Dr. Ahmad Jaber, AAANY actively responds to the the social and economic programming needs of the Arab community in the greater New York City area. AAANY’s clients include Arabs and Arab Americans from the countries of Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Moracco, and Palestine, among others. With youth programs like after-school tutoring, boys basketball, and the Princess Club, the organization’s providing ESL and citizenship classes, and its upcoming Salaam Series Workshops with Brooklyn for Peace, AAANY is poised to remain “the Ellis Island of the Arab Community” while fulfilling its mission threefold: “Our aim is for families to achieve the ultimate goals of independence, productivity, and family stability.”

Since the events of September 11, 2001, AAANY has broadened its mission, taking on the tasks of also “empowering and defending its community.” In December 2001, AAANY officially established itself as a non-profit organization and opened its offices in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

Participants Heidi Rosbe and Majed Seif

During StoryCorps’ visit to Bay Ridge, Majed Seif, an AAANY volunteer from Palestine, participated with his friend and coworker Heidi Rosbe. Majed shared the story of his obtaining a college degree during the Intifada and showed us the art he produced before coming to the United States over ten years ago.

Qur’an scripture made in wood against black velvet by Majed.

Traditional pots made by Majed in Palestine.

Harry J. Perez and his daughter Dana visited MobileBooth West to share their family’s history in the field of aviation. It all began with Harry’s father, Joe Perez, a former pilot in World War II. Today Harry, Dana, and one of Dana’s brothers are all pilots. (The other brother is a skydiver!)

During their stay in San Antonio, Texas, facilitators Yuki Aizawa and Rose Gorman were treated to a walk in the clouds by Dana at Stinson Municipal Airport.

Our first Door to Door with Stagebridge, a senior theater company, was held at the South Berkeley Senior Center. We had the pleasure of working with Marijo, a premiere storyteller, teacher and performer in the Oakland community. She is a true StoryCorps Griot Superstar, interviewing 5 participants in one day! Talk about dedication… she even made her own StoryCorps Griot button (pictured above). Thanks Marijo!