If the title of this blog post is a familiar phrase to you, then you, like StoryCorps Participant Chris Parm and myself, are probably a comic book fan. The “healing factor” refers to the super powers of one of Marvel Comics’ most popular mutant anti-heroes, Wolverine. This particular character has feral tenacity and an ability to heal from virtually any wound or disease.

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.”

Facilitator Jeremy Helton listens to Michigan on opening day in Grand Rapids

With the first days of fall, the East MobileBooth headed west from Akron, Ohio to Grand Rapids, Michigan—the last stop on an unofficial “Great Lakes Tour” that also featured Erie, Pennsylvania and Rochester, New York.

The MobileBooth is settled on the banks of the Grand River just outside The Public Museum. Among other artifacts, the museum houses a 1920’s Driggs Skyla biplane. Grand Rapids native John Shipman (below) came to StoryCorps to describe his first taste of flight in one of those planes as a ten-year-old farm kid growing up during the Depression. Now, John likes to visit the museum just to see the plane and get lost in the memories it calls up.

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One part of this story begins in the 1980s, when Akron toymaker Michael Cohill met an 18-year-old archeology student named Brian Graham at a party. Michael told Brian that he had been digging up marbles at his toy workshop, which decades before had been a marble factory.

Naturally, Brian the archaeologist was intrigued. They made a date to continue excavating Michael’s factory, and then they expanded the search to dig through the catacombs in downtown Akron for hidden  treasure. They succeeded in finding four little clay marbles. But when a parking deck downtown was removed years later, they found the ground littered with marbles and old penny toys. They also found the oldest penny toy in their now large collection, a small Santa figurine.

The other part of this story begins 100 hundred years earlier, in the 1880’s, when a man named Samuel Dyke started the production of penny toys in Akron. Before this time, toys were handmade and very expensive, a luxury afforded only by the rich. With Dyke’s mass production of toys, though, a new toy-buying demographic was created. Kids with a penny or two in their pocket now had something other than sweets to purchase. Samuel Dyke’s business boomed until he was making over a million marbles per day and shipping them around the country.

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“At my age, you don’t want to do anything if its not fun,” said Rose Brudno as she got ready for her interview at the StoryCorps East MobileBooth in Akron, Ohio.

Luckily, Rose seemed to have a pretty good time remembering her many bartending years with her grandson Joshua during their interview. After divorcing her husband in the 1950s, Rose moved to Akron with her three kids and took over the Zanzabar, a tavern in a working-class African American neighborhood where most of the patrons were employed by Akron’s rubber industry. Rose, a white Jewish woman from Cleveland, stood out for more reasons than one. Open 21 hours a day, the bar was filled at 5:00 a.m. with men from the rubber-factory night-shift, singing and dancing and breakfasting at the bar.

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Akron, Ohio. Birthplace of the rubber tire as we know it. Goodyear. Goodrich. Firestone. The American Trucking Industry. Hometown of Alcoholics Anonymous, Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech, Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders, the new wave band Devo, and basketball player LeBron James.

We cut the StoryBooth ribbon in this historic city on a cold day in front of the Akron-Summit County Public Library. WKSU, our public broadcasting host, warmed up the crowd with coffee and pastries while former Deputy Mayor Dorothy Jackson and Reverend Dr. Ronald Fowler christened the booth with the first conversation of the day.

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When they imagine having an impact on future generations and how they will be remembered in the future, people often think of parenting children. But as these interviews from Erie, Pennsylvania show, there are many ways to leave a legacy.

Father Bob: A True Man

Jim Murray and his son Bob Murray came to the MobileBooth to talk about Father Bob, Jim’s older brother and a devoted priest. Jim and Father Bob are the two youngest sons in an Irish-Catholic family of five boys, all with big personalities. The other brothers became engineers, attorneys, and insurance partners, but Father Bob knew from the age of nine that he’d become a priest.

Jim recalled, “He was never a pastor…He was quiet. If we were in a room, and if there were thirty people in that room, I’d go around and meet thirty people and I’d remember who they were and where they were from. But if there were two people in that room that were hurting, and one was thinking about suicide, somehow they would talk to Father Bob. And he would make them feel better about themselves.”

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When Esmeraldaliz Torres was seven, she wanted to play the violin. She had signed up for classes at Erie’s Inner-City Neighborhood Art House, but the violin didn’t work out for her. Instead, they gave her a cello.

Esmeraldaliz’s mother Janet remembers the moment she first saw her daughter play. Esmeraldaliz was only seven years old, and Janet “got scared for her first performance because the actual cello was bigger than her.” They both laugh when they talk about that day. “I really didn’t know how you were supposed to play the cello, so I put a miniskirt on her, and that didn’t work because it had to go in between her legs. They ended up making a long skirt for her.”

Now eleven, Esmeraldaliz is one of the best cellists at the Inner-City Art House, and Janet is still front-and-center at her performances.

Not everything has always gone so seamlessly in the Torres family. Janet’s own mother wasn’t around when she was growing up in the Bronx. No one she knew played the cello, and few people in her family finished high school. Esmeraldaliz is an honor student, but she still struggles sometimes with math. Janet remembers working together on long division. “At the time I was still going for my GED because I was a high school dropout. But it was a pretty good process because we learned together… Once I got on that graduating stage, it was like I could to anything. All I could hear was my name being screamed. My kids and my husband.” Leaning into the mic, Esmeraldaliz imitates her family, yelling “Mom mom mom!”

At the end of their conversation, Janet looks at her daughter. She asks: “What’s the first memory you have of me?”

Esmeralda takes a moment before she replies: “The first time that I ever performed. When I saw your face.”

“And what did you think?”

“I thought you were really proud of me.”

“I was.”

“She was actually, like, kind of crying.”

Janet laughs. “Tears of joy, though. I was real proud. It’s like I couldn’t believe that I did such a good job that she was up there.”

Opening day in Erie, Pennsylvania was a big event! Reporters from our public broadcasting host, WQLN, were on hand to cover our arrival as were local ABC affiliate WJET-TV, NBC affiliate WICU Channel 12 and the Erie Times.

Site Supervisor Anna Walters (above) welcomed the assembled press and curious onlookers to the MobileBooth. Meanwhile, new Mobile Facilitator Lilly Sullivan facilitated our first interview in Erie, a remembrance by family members of  John Kanzius. He was an inventor, radio and TV engineer, and ham radio operator in Erie. John passed away in February of this year but made headlines after he developed an innovative treatment for cancer using radio waves.

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Emeterio “Pete” Otero (far left), a dean of Monroe Community College, arrived at the MobileBooth in Rochester, New York on a cool Sunday morning with his son Christopher (far right) and grandsons Jeremiah (center right) and Noah (center left). Emeterio’s grandsons were intrigued by stories of their grandfather getting his teeth knocked out during a middle-school fight; parachuting through night skies in the Air Force; and going back to school via the G.I. Bill. They also inquired about rumors they had heard that Emeterio was once beat up by a girl during middle school, which their granddad gleefully confirmed is true.

Yet it was Emeterio’s transition from academic obscurity to established scholar that intrigued his grandsons the most. Emeterio lived in Buffalo, New York and was a member of “the only Puerto Rican family in [his] neighborhood.” His parents emigrated to the Northeast from Puerto Rico during the 1950’s when Emeterio was seven. His father had been a farmer in Cieles, Puerto Rico and Emeterio mentions that his “pops had a can-do attitude.” Emeterio’s dad came to the U.S. first, and his mother came over a year later with him and two of his siblings.

There were scuffles, taunts, and derogatory names throughout his school years. Upon entering high school, Emeterio predicted he’d “drop out in the tenth grade.” The level of uncertainty in his life was overwhelming. In the Summer of 1964, Emeterio joined the military at the age of 17. “The airborne stuff sounded really neat…and it was one of the better decisions I ever made because it taught me structure and discipline. If I had stayed on in the same lifestyle, there’s a good chance I could have been dead. Drugs were coming on strong at that point…but I grew up and got a good sense of myself.”

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A grandmother can be a vibrant source of care and inspiration. She might warm our milk, teach us that hard work is important, or remind us that our place in the world is just as important as anyone else’s.

When Orlando Ortiz (right) — a native New Yorker from the Bronx — recalled visiting Puerto Rico during a trip after he graduated middle school, one very distinct person shimmered beyond everything else: his Abuelita (Grandmother) “Salu.” When Orlando visited the Mobile Booth, he described his grandmother to his partner, Paul Tantillo.

“[Salu] was more casual. She smoked cigars. When she needed a handkerchief, she’d get the hem of her skirt, bend over and blow on it.” He laughed. “[She] was very contemporary. She always cut her hair.”

And to Orlando, his Abuelita “Salu” provided a concept that he’s carried on throughout his life.

“For this to be a world, there has to be everything in it. It’s like, the universe has everything in it.”
“Why did she say this?”
“Well, I think she knew I was gay. It was her way of saying ‘that’s alright.’ You accept everything just the way it is because it’s all part of the world.”