One of the pairs who participated in StoryCorps was Ed Randolph and Rachel Jones. Ed started working at Friends in 1977 as a receptionist, one year before Rachel enrolled as a ninth grader. He learned a lot while on the job, especially about Quakerism. “I enjoyed the lifestyle of simplicity and not striving beyond your means,” he says.  “Silent meeting was one of my favorite things here. Just to sit and be with yourself and be still.”

Ed Randolph (l) and Rachel Jones (r)

Ed remembered his job interview at Friends:

During the interview, they said ‘You’re going to have to say no to kids. Can you say no?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I have a son. She said, ‘And you say no to him?’ And I said ‘yeah.’ So I was hired as the receptionist. It was just a job. But what happened to me here, I didn’t expect at all.

Ed’s first assignment at Friends was to stop students from hanging out in the hallway, but Ed quickly became less of an enforcer and more of a counselor. “I felt comfortable talking to you,” Rachel told Ed. “You stated what you saw, and let me find my way into what was right without telling me what I should do.”

During his time at Friends, Ed enjoyed writing and composed poems for some of his favorite students, including Rachel. During his 18 years at Friends,  Ed became more than the enforcer he was hired to be: He also became a friend and mentor to Rachel and many other students at Friends Seminary.

Danielle Linzer (L) and Diane Exavier (R) after their StoryCorps interview at the Whitney Museum of Art

In November 2010 my co-Facilitator, Matt Herman, and I set up a Door-to-Door recording day at Youth Insights at the Whitney Museum of Art. Danielle Linzer (L) and Diane Exavier (R), associates at the Whitney, successfully planned 5 interviews for youth members to record visiting artists, their peers or parents.

They also booked the last day’s slot to interview one another. Although Danielle and Diane had then shared an office and desk space for over a year, they told each other some stories of their mischievous childhoods for the first time.

Danielle grew up on New York’s Roosevelt Island, roaming its ad-free waterfront walkways and exploring its abandoned buildings. She and her friends climbed the insane asylums’ empty stairs and marveled at the dark halls of rooms for smallpox quarantine. As teenagers they looked out over the East River at night to midtown Manhattan’s resplendent skyline reflected on the water, with its endless white noise humming across.

Diane described growing up Haitian-American. She disliked her family’s homemade food, and she and her cousin once realized that they could spill their plates’ contents out of the window instead of swallowing it down. Months later someone could have found cassava casseroles in all forms on an empty stretch of sidewalk outside their Flatbush building in Brooklyn.

Danielle is a photographer, and Diane, a playwright. They commiserated over being arts professionals while working on another craft. Laughing at their similar names but very different heights, these office mates left their StoryCorps interview with a little more to connect on.

During the recording day, artists and volunteers stopped by to talk about their backgrounds, their relationship to art, and the work they do for the organization. Lester A. Laboy remembered meeting AFC Founder Eliana Godoy one evening in El Barrio, a neighborhood where he was born and raised. He credits AFC with showing him that art wasn’t something that belonged only in textbooks. He soon realized that art could play a part in his life. Through his work with the organization, Lester has helped his neighborhood tackle immigration, education, and environmental issues with the inclusion of the arts in their everyday lives.

Art For Change, its volunteers and its artists, work every day to answer the question asked by this post and is similar to StoryCorps: How can one conversation change anything at all?

You should stop by one of our booths and see.

Libby Gardner, left, and daughter Eve Remba.

Our first participants of the day were Elizabeth L. Gardner (Libby) and her daughter Eve Remba. Libby was all smiles as she came into the recording room, and Eve began their conversation by congratulating her mother for winning the Congressional Gold Medal earlier this year. You see Libby was a WASP – a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots – a pioneering civilian organization of female pilots that flew Military Aircraft under the orders of the United States Air Force during World War II.

She remembered how at first, her family was against the extents she went to in order to learn how to fly: Libby moved across states, from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania, searching for jobs that would allow her to clock in flying hours. Eventually, she left her job as an Inspection Clerk at the Piper Aircraft Factory, borrowing luggage from a friend in order to travel to Sweetwater, TX, to complete six months of WASP training. Libby was twenty-two years old by the time she was stationed in Harlingen, TX, and sixty-six years later she’s still able to easily and comfortably talk about the different aircrafts she had the chance to fly, with a smile in her voice as she spoke of her favorite plane, the B-26 Marauder.

A picture of Libby Gardner in her 20's while on her B-26 graces the lobby of the Amsterdam Nursing Home

Towards the end of her interview, when asked why she would go through so much trouble to be able to fly, Libby quickly answered:

“Because of the freedom! Flying… is a physical pleasure.”

“Did you know you were a trailblazer?” Eve asked her mother. Libby took a couple of seconds before quietly answering,

“Not at the time. At the time I just thought I was very fortunate. We were very fortunate.”

This is our second collaboration with MoMA, and you can read about StoryCorps’ last visit to the museum in the post, “Meet StoryCorps at MoMA.” This year we recorded seven interviews at the Museum using StoryKits, our most portable form of recording equipment, and a very popular service for many of our Memory Loss Initiative participants. All of the interviews were recorded simultaneously throughout the museum while the other activities were under way. Sisters, mothers and sons, husbands and wives – all came together to share their unique stories and to bask in the world of art.

To learn more about our Memory Loss Initiative, visit www.storycorps.org/initiatives/mli.
To learn more about Meet me at MoMA, visit http://www.moma.org/meetme/index

The memorial reserved a soundproof room for a full StoryCorps recording day. It was originally installed to record museum visitors’ impressions. Although stress, loss, and chaos surrounded the site, the room was a sanctuary where we recorded participants’ stories.

One participant, Brian Dorsey, emerged from the pack of tourists. Joined by Amy Weinstein, NS11MM Oral Historian, Brian remembered his late wife, Jennifer Dorsey-Howley, a small woman with brown hair, sharp-blue eyes and “a smile that lit up a room.”

Brian and Jennifer first saw each other from across a bar in Mineola, New York. They struck up a conversation, became friends, and started to commute together from New Hyde Park, New York to lower Manhattan, where they both worked. During one morning commute he finally and nervously asked her out to dinner; they were married a few years later.

Brian proudly acknowledged that with only a high school degree and considerable determination, Jennifer became Director at Aon Corporation, a reinsurance company formerly located on the 92nd floor of 2 World Trade Center. Jennifer was an expecting mother when she died in the September 11, 2001 attacks. Posterity and future memorial exhibits aside, Brian stated that this recording was for her.

StoryCorps Door-to-Door travels all over the country recording the stories of everyday Americans; however, sometimes we prefer to stay right here in New York City. After all, this is the city of a million stories. Two weeks ago, we had the pleasure of recording some native New York stories with the 300 West Block Association of Chelsea. Mrs. Eleanor Horowitz, a long-time Chelsea resident, opened her home to other residents and StoryCorps for this recording day.

Although today Chelsea is thought of as a well-off part of Manhattan, this wasn’t always the case. When Eleanor and her husband moved into the neighborhood in the 1970s, her mother was horrified that the young couple would be living in a place that had garbage cans on the street. Eleanor’s interview partner, Marina, remembered that when she was growing up during that time, Chelsea was often the place people came to for illegal activity. Marina remembers how she and her friends knew which blocks to avoid when they went out. Despite the unsavory characters of the neighborhood, Chelsea was a place where neighbors knew one another and kids played outside. However, the neighborhood is changing.

Although you will still find corner stores in the neighborhood, they no longer play the role they used to. Norma Aviles and her interview partner, Linda Reira, remember that the corner store or “bodega” was not only where you went for milk, eggs, and bread, but also the central conduit for news. If you wanted to know who was born, who died or who hit the daily lottery number, you hung out at the bodega. Because the bodega owners knew everyone in the neighborhood, you could often buy what you needed on credit if you did not have the money.

During their StoryCorps interview, Norma and Linda also remember the bitter battles fought between Chelsea residents and landlords who tried to displace current tenants in order to attract a wealthier group of tenants. Although unproven, Norma believes that her landlord set her building on fire as a last resort to boot the lower income tenants from the building; however, Norma and her family fought against displacement and continue to live in the neighborhood. Today, many long-time residents of Chelsea are still fighting the uphill battle to keep the neighborhood diverse and affordable.

We really enjoyed our time at Eleanor’s home talking with residents about the their fondest and deepest memories of the neighborhood they call home. Thank you to Eleanor and Andra for being such gracious hostesses and making us feel welcome. Moreover, we would like to extend a very special thank you to New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn who donated this recording to day to the 300 West Block Association.

Sonia and Nolia Lozano

During the month of March, StoryCorps Door-to-Door  traveled uptown in New York City to record interviews for the Historias Initiative at El Museo del Barrio, one of the City’s leading Latino cultural institutions.

El Museo, located on Fifth Avenue and 105th Street, has been a fixture of El Barrio since 1969, thanks to founder Raphael Montañez Ortiz. Our first participant of the day, a very lively Nolia Lozano, 90, who came with her daughter Sonia, remembered vividly the beginnings of El Museo.

“I came here with my children all the time,” Nolia reminisced in Spanish, “I always brought my kids here, and we’d sell empanadas and pasteles. They were in all the programs.”

Nolia was born in Puerto Rico and moved to the United States in her 20’s. While talking with Sonia, Nolia fondly remembered El Barrio of her youth: a neighborhood where everyone knew each other, and where families freely used fire escapes as a balcony extension of their living rooms.

“People slept with their doors open, didn’t they Mami?” Sonia asked

“Yes. It was beautiful! That’s why I’ve never wanted to leave this neighborhood.” And at 90, Nolia is still an active member of her community, still going to El Museo as often as possible. After having raised her four children in Spanish Harlem, Nolia likes to watch her neighbors play dominoes on the weekends and just have a good time with her friends.

“This is like my backyard,” Nolia said while jauntily walking out of the newly renovated Museo, “and it’s still beautiful.”

As an Orthodox Jew, Nancy had to be creative about observing her faith while she was on skiing or biking excursions. “In 1994 she decided she was going to take a back road trip out west, I think it was a 10 day bike tour, into southern Utah and northern Arizona. But she had no problems,” says Harvey. “One time she stayed in a tent over the entire Saturday and then ultimately caught up with the group subsequently on the Sunday.”

Harvey and Suri came to the MobileBooth with a copy of  the book they published after Nancy’s death. The book serves as a companion to the website Harvey and Suri created to honor their daughter. Harvey read one of the passages written by one of Nancy’s fellow cyclists: “Nancy always worked harder than everybody else because she was a kosher racer. It’s hard to arrange bike racing around the Jewish Sabbath rules but Nancy always did it.”

“After 9/11 when we went back to her apartment to retrieve many of her belongings there was her racing bicycle and her skis,” recalls Harvey. “I barely could get on a bicycle and get off without falling and also my skiing is not the greatest but I was determined to basically be able to ride her bike. Getting on and off the bike and riding up and down Central Park or Prospect Park or up in the mountains gave me a sense of how Nancy felt riding the bike.”

The Cultural Center and the Hungarian Consulate (where we conducted the recordings) brought in a diverse and fascinating group of Hungarians, including Evi Blaikie, a child survivor of the Holocaust. Evi brought with her a book (pictured below) she wrote about her mother, whom she was separated from as a toddler, and later reunited with.

We look forward to recording more stories at Extremely Hungary this weekend in New Brunswick, New Jersey!