In honor of Gay Pride Month, Atlanta’s Radial Cafe was abuzz with stories from the LGBTQ community on Wednesday evening, June 23, 2010.  Radial owner Phil Palmer generously hosted Atlanta StoryCorps and over 100 members of Atlanta’s LGBTQ community, their friends, family and colleagues.  Master of ceremonies for the evening was WABE’s own John Lemley, host of City Cafe, which airs on WABE each Tuesday.

Upon entering the event, attendees registered and received a bag of goodies donated by WABE.  They then enjoyed light fare graciously provided by Radial.

Once the program was underway, attendees listened to LGBTQ stories selected from both national and local participants.  All of the local StoryCorps Atlanta alumni whose stories we played were in attendance.

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Spend a day at the colorful VOX office and you will walk away impressed by the seriousness, imagination, creativity, and audacious energy of the teens in the program. They dream, and they dream big.

VOX Teen Communications is a non-profit youth development organization located in downtown Atlanta, GA, dedicated to “giving us teens the skills and resources to raise our voices about issues that most matter to us.” They publish a teen newspaper and maintain a web site. Some VOX teens are active in the Just Georgia project, an initiative to revise Georgia’s Juvenile Code related to youth living in foster care.

So, what issues did these teens voice when StoryCorps spent a day at VOX? They articulated dreams and hopes for their future, concerns about their peers, and what they think college life will be like. Of course there were pop culture references to music, television, and movies as well. The teens also chose to talk about more serious topics.

For example, Cassandra Maddox (15) and Teyonna Ridgeway (18) discussed body image and its effects on the age at which girls become sexually active. They came to their StoryCorps interview with pages of notes and questions for each other. After discussing how they work to maintain a positive image of themselves in spite of messages they might receive from media, Cassandra noted, “When a guy says you’re sexy, he’s looking at your body. If he tells you you’re pretty, he’s looking at your face. If he tells you you’re beautiful, he’s looking at your inside.”

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In early March StoryCorps Atlanta partnered with the Washington, D.C. based organization Our Family Skate Association to record the stories of roller skaters in the Atlanta area. Over the course of two recording days, eleven skaters rolled their way into the Booth and forced us all to recall our own skate stories. Our Family Skate Association Board Chair, Tasha Klusman, orchestrated the interview process and brought to the Atlanta Booth some of the most famous African American skaters in the country. Tasha has helped arrange interviews with skaters in several StoryCorps venues, and you can read another skate story in the blog post “Charlie “Whip” Davis.”

Detroit native and Atlanta Sk8-a-Thon founder Joi Stafford (aka Queen of the South), talked about her first skating experience in Detroit, Michigan and skating “Detroit Style.” She talked about founding Sk8-a-Thon and how every Labor Day Weekend, the event brings skaters from around the world to Atlanta. Read the rest of this entry »

When Julia Anne Bourne was diagnosed with cancer, she got mad. Then, she got busy raising awareness and money for breast cancer research. Since she was “incredibly” healthy – a marathon runner and a cyclist – Julia felt blindsided by her cancer diagnosis. One of her friends was uneasy about Julia’s breast cancer diagnosis. “It  scared her. If this (breast cancer) could happen to me, it could happen to her.”

Julia decided she would not be a “happy camper” and fight her disease with stoic passivity. She describes participating in a breast cancer event not long after her diagnosis. “I was confused when they saluted breast cancer survivors. I was told that I was a survivor even though I had just been diagnosed. What other disease labels you a survivor based on just the diagnosis?”

A self-described “cancer curmudgeon,” Julia dislikes the ubiquitous breast cancer “pink fluff.” Says Julia, “I prefer white – the color of research labs – rather than pink.”

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In early March, StoryCorps Atlanta spent a day recording stories of hope, redemption and service at City of Refuge, a neighborhood-based service center in the Vine City community of Atlanta. We had an opportunity to listen to some of the staff, volunteers, and residents while we were there. Based on the stories we heard and the people we met, City of Refuge assists the helped to become the helpers.

“It’s a privilege to be in this space and place and do what I do,” says Dr. Charles Moore, who heads the free clinic at City of Refuge. Dr. Moore and his research advisee, Sheri Davis-Faulkner, were one of the six pairs to share their stories at City of Refuge. As a physician treating patients with head and neck cancers, Dr. Moore grew frustrated that by the time he saw patients, they had few treatment options left. He kept thinking, “Somebody needs to do something to help these patients.” One day he thought, “Maybe that person is supposed to be me.”

As a young girl, Sheri studied ballet from ages 3-13 and her ballet instructors told her she needed to lose weight. Her baby-sitters armed Sheri with the self-confidence to “decide what my body looked like and not to feel like I needed to fight my body.” As part of her doctoral research, Sheri wanted to help middle and high school students in urban food deserts (locations with limited access to whole foods and fresh fruits and vegetables). She needed a site that would agree to provide space for her field research on childhood obesity and body image.

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In 83 years Callye Fears Chatman’s life has undergone dramatic changes. From her beginnings as the daughter of sharecroppers (“It was my job to carry water to the workers and to ring the dinner bell”), to her educational journey at Clark College in Atlanta, to her work as an educator, to her and her husband’s decision to move their family to a white suburb so their children could attend better schools, Mrs. Chatman witnessed the social, economic, and political changes that shaped the South in the 20^th century. Yet, when Mrs. Chatman and her daughter, Faye Capers, participated in the StoryCorps Memory Loss Initiative, Mrs. Chatman did not come to talk about the social and political changes she had lived through. Instead, she wanted most to talk about her mother, who had died a month earlier at age 103.

“It was a true blessing to have five generations and everybody able to communicate with each other,” says Mrs. Chatman of her life with her mother, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. When Faye asked what Mrs. Chatman would write in a letter to her mother, the words sprang forth immediately:

“Dear Mom, how are you doing with the saints up in heaven? I know you are still singing, especially your favorite song,  ‘How Great Thou Art.’ We really miss you, but we know you are there with the rest of your family, your eight siblings, your mother and father, and all your friends who passed on before you. So we are looking forward to joining you as well.”

Part of their story was edited by WABE and aired during City Cafe on Tuesday, December 28, 2009. Listen to that broadcast at www.wabe.org/storycorps.

March 7, 1965. It’s been almost 45 years since Amelia Boynton Robinson was beaten and tear gassed on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. She was attempting, along with up to 600 other marchers, to cross the bridge from Selma to Montgomery to protest the earlier shooting of a protestor, as well as advocate for voting rights for Selma’s Black citizens. Now, approaching 99 years of age, Mrs. Boynton Robinson and her friend, Genise Kemp-Brown, came to the Atlanta StoryCorps recording day at the Auburn Avenue Research Library to tell Mrs. Boynton Robinson’s story of courage, determination, and eventual triumph.

“The air was thick with tear gas,” Mrs. Boynton Robinson remembers of the Sunday that became known as ‘Bloody Sunday.’ She said she was gassed so much that almost 45  years later her throat still burns. Front-page pictures the day after the march show Mrs. Boynton Robinson lying unconscious on the bridge. When she woke up  in the hospital the next day, Mrs. Boynton Robinson resolved, “I’m going to fight more than I ever [have].”

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The Atlanta StoryCorps team conducted outreach recordings at WONDERroot, a community arts organization in Reynoldstown, an Atlanta neighborhood. Along with facilitator Lola Ibitoye, I had the pleasure of recording a few of the young people involved with WONDERroot and the Atlanta arts community.

A few weeks later, we were invited back to WONDERroot to participate in Raising All Youth Voices, a youth media night. The event was a collaboration between WONDERroot, VOX Teen Newspaper, Fuel Media, and StoryCorps. The event showcased the amazing work of teens in the Atlanta area. These phenomenal teens wowed the audience with a variety of talents which included a spicy salsa dance routine, sensational spoken word presentations, and a live band. VOX, the teen newspaper, had a very strong presence in the evening’s events and distributed their periodicals to all the guests.

Among the food, mingling, and fun, guests were encouraged to visit the many stations set up throughout the Center. One included television feeds that featured debates that many of the teens had recorded with local Atlanta television channels. Another station aired video footage the teens had produced and recorded themselves. StoryCorps set up a listening booth inside WONDERroot’s recording studio. The booth generated so much interest that many of the teens asked if they could volunteer with StoryCorps in the future!

The VOX teens took a special interest in our presence that evening and interviewed Lola and I about StoryCorps and our work with youth and the Atlanta community. Overall, the evening was a wonderful opportunity to witness the depth of these young peoples’ talents and the power of the teen voice.

Two of the most memorable interviews we’ve recorded so far in Atlanta were with two of our youngest participants: eleven-year-old Danielle Dinberg and nine-year-old Noah Jernigan.

Danielle and her mother, Carolyn Dinberg, came to the Atlanta StoryBooth to record a conversation about Danielle’s unbridled equine love.

“She would rather muck stables than clean her room,” is how Carolyn laughingly describes her daughter. Danielle agreed and said she even likes the smell of a barn, including horse manure, because that means horses are around.

With such passion comes the risk of heartache. Danielle experienced this early when her pony, Cocoa Puff, developed cancer and died. “She spent two hours saying good-bye to him,” Carolyn remembers. After Cocoa Puff’s death, Danielle stopped riding and helped children with disabilities learn to ride horses through hippotherapy.

Two of Danielle’s major life lessons – patience and responsibility – came to her via her four-footed friends. Cocoa Puff helped her slow down and not rush things. Danielle says that when she cannot be with a horse, sketching a horse helps calm her down. She says she “feels” the horses as she sketches them.

While young Danielle’s passion is horses, Noah Jernigan’s passion is of a different kind: he loves all things NPR. Although he cannot get his driver’s license for another six years, Car Talk is Noah’s favorite program. The StoryCorps segments on Morning Edition are a close second.

Noah brought his grandfather, Bill Mays, to the StoryBooth to learn more about his grandfather’s military service, his marriage, his role as a parent, and what it means to be a grandfather. Bill, who says he has experienced seven wars in his lifetime, recalls how he slowly realized, “war is not the answer.” After their StoryBooth conversation, Site Supervisor Amanda Plumb took Noah and his family on an impromptu station tour, where Noah met several WABE hosts and chatted with station general manager, John Weatherford.

At 7:30a.m. on a crisp, fall Atlanta morning, the Atlanta StoryCorps team left the StoryBooth and traveled some 40 miles north on I-75 to Woodstock (no, not New York) Georgia. Although the trip was somewhat shorter than anticipated, 40 miles in any direction from Atlanta plops one squarely in the sticks!  In this case, we were in the north Georgia mountains. The air was drier, much cooler (actually, cold) and the sunlight seemed brighter. As we left the main road and followed the smaller one that would take us to the dining hall of the Cherokee Outdoor Family YMCA, it was clear that this was not going to be a typical recording day.

Our participants today were in the Atlanta area attending the Speak OUT Camp sponsored by COLAGE. COLAGE is “the only national, youth-driven network of people with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer parents.” Today’s recording booth was a converted sleeping cabin–rustic, worn, dimly lit and cold. My very first participants, Miranda, 22, and Cara, 19, had only met the night before at the airport. They talked about their gay dads. Both women have fathers whom had been married to women but later admitted to themselves that they were gay or bisexual; thus decided to end their traditional marriages.

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