StoryCorps Historias launched its East Los Angeles, California stop with a vibrant outpouring of support from host radio station 89.3 KPCC and local supporters Farmers Insurance Group. With a picturesque backdrop of sun-drenched lawns and the glistening East L.A. Public Library pond, guest speakers took to the podium to talk about why Historias is an invaluable initiative for the Latino community in Los Angeles.

Guest speakers included KPCC reporter Patricia Nazario; Southern California Public Radio President and CEO Bill Davis; Center for the Study of Los Angeles Director Fernando J. Guerra, of Loyola Marymount University; UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Director Chon Noriega; East L.A. Public Library Chicano Resource Center Librarian Daniel Hernandez; our inaugural StoryCorps Historias participant in East L.A., Luz Herrera; and your blog post writer and StoryCorps facilitator Alejandro De La Cruz.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

There are many reasons to love KALW, our local public radio partner in San Francisco. Let me count (a few of) the ways: For one, they are a community-driven radio station that really puts the public back in public radio. Two, their news magazine program, Crosscurrents, is award-winning and the best way to stay informed on Bay Area issues and events. And last, but not least, because of their support and commitment to airing locally-recorded StoryCorps clips on a weekly basis, they have become one of the most successful, long-term public radio partners in StoryCorps history!

Plus, they are all really wonderful people. Which is why it was so lovely and amazing to host them for a day at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. In January, the KALW crew came for a bagel breakfast, listening session, and discussion. While they had heard many-a-StoryCorps clips on the radio, some had no idea what actually happens during a StoryCorps interview, nor the Facilitator’s exact role in the process. We also talked about how we could make our partnership even stronger…discussing ways we can further reach out to the community and provide even more stories for the station to edit and broadcast. This radio rap session was followed by a group museum and booth tour.

Read the rest of this entry »

The first dance is an important part of many weddings which traditionally involves the two newlyweds. In the cases of two separate sets of participants who visited the MobileBooth in Jacksonville, Florida, however, that tradition was adjusted ever so slightly.

Tricia Jones came to the MobileBooth with her mother Gen Fields and talked about some of her favorite memories. “I will always remember us dancing because I can’t dance with anybody else the way I can dance with you,” said Tricia. “It was really special for me to get to, unscripted, unplanned, get to dance with you at my wedding party. It was a big party, but you know, it was awesome to have the opportunity to dance with you and get you to show your stuff and twirl me around the floor and make me look damn good!”

“You’re very good,” said Gen.

“Only because of you,” said Tricia.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.”

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the great privileges of working on the StoryCorps project is that as Facilitators, we are occasional witnesses to wonderful first person accounts of history that make all of those high school history lessons come to life, and seem more relevant. Participant Frank Scardiglia tells such a story to his son Mark Scardiglia at the StoryBooth in Lower Manhattan. Growing up in Lucca, Italy during WWII, he describes the summer of 1944 when SS soldiers occupied the small town before the liberation. “That was a very very painful part of our lives. There was a shortage of food, we were under constant bombardment.” Young men were frequently shot on sight and Frank learned to dodge mortar. “I learned to recognize when the shell came near us because the pitch of the sound decreased at a very rapid rate. As long as the shell kept a very high pitch I knew it was going over us and we were safe. Otherwise it was a bad situation.”

We were very glad when the Americans came. All the bells in the [church] steeples of Lucca started peeling like it was Easter.” It was the 92nd Division of African American Soldiers, also known as Buffalo Soldiers that liberated Lucca that day, and Frank’s encounter with one of the soldiers is particularly compelling.

“We were glad when we saw someone with a darker face because we knew they were not Germans! I came in contact with one. I knew not a single word of English, [but] I wanted him to tell my grandparents in Chicago that we were ok.” So he picked up an Italian-English Dictionary and using one word at a time, relayed the message. The soldier found his family’s address and three months later he got word from his grandparents that they had received the letter.

Frank never saw the soldier again, but his memory of that day and gratitude for the soldier’s service left indelible marks on his life.

MobileBooth East kicked off the first stop of 2010 amid the palm trees and students of Miami Dade’s Wolfson Campus. On an unseasonably cold day in Miami, outdoor heaters warmed the crowd as we snacked on guava pastelitos and café con leche.

Site Supervisor Whitney Henry-Lester, Facilitator Virginia Lora, and Miami-Dade Community College students

While in Miami, MobileBooth East is partnering with WDNA public radio to record the stories of Latino and Hispanic communities as part of StoryCorps Historias. And we were thrilled to welcome new Mobile Facilitator—and Miami local—Virginia Lora to the road.

Manuel and Mercedes Quiroga

For the first conversation of the day, Mercy and Manny Quiroga talked about family. Manny began the conversation by sharing memories of his father, Manuel Quiroga, who Manny remembers as a strong, determined man, “with great hands.” Manny particularly remembers the time that his father sawed through a ficus tree in their backyard in Havana, Cuba. Fifteen feet in diameter, the tree was so large that its roots were interfering with the house’s plumbing. Manny’s father only had access to a tiny pruning saw, so he spent every Saturday and Sunday for two years sawing, stroke by stroke, through the ficus’s huge trunk.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re all only human, that’s for sure. But here in Yuma, Arizona, everybody is also Yuman. Or at least that’s what they call the people from this sunny town of just under 195,000 people. Yuma lies just five minutes from the border of California, and just 20 minutes from the border of Mexico. Recorded as the sunniest place on earth and the iceberg lettuce capital of the world, Yuma ain’t a bad place to be for the wintry month of January! Site Supervisor Anna Walters, brand-new Facilitator Jorge Rios, and I joined the rest of the snowbirds to soak up the sun and collect some stories — particularly those of Latinos, as part of StoryCorps Historias. While in Yuma, MobileBooth West partners with KAWC, Colorado Public Media, as well as the Yuma County Main Library, where the Booth is parked.

Lenore Stuart and her mother, Mary Redondo Lorona, were among the first participants to come in and share some of their family history and favorite stories. Mary’s father, Jose Maria Redondo, first came through Yuma from Altar, Mexico on his way to California during the Gold Rush. Taken by the beauty of Yuma, he swore he would come back one day. And 10 years later, that is exactly what he did. He even changed the name of the territory from Arizona City to Yuma, after the Yumans, who were the chief Indian inhabitants of the area.

Jose served many roles in the Yuma community, including mayor for some time. A lover of music, Jose ordered a Steinway Grand Piano in New York City to be shipped from France to Yuma so that any child who wanted to could learn to play. The Panama Canal, however, had not been constructed yet, so the piano was shipped all the way around Cape Horn and up the western coast until it arrived in Yuma, its keys jingling down Main Street.

The piano is still in tact today, although out of tune, and has been passed around various family homes for some time. Mary, herself, never truly learned to play, but she has many memories of the piano still. “I’m wherever that piano is,” Mary reflected. “It’s old, but it’s a great piano.” And at 95, Mary may be old, but she sure is a great storyteller.

Hector “Nicer” Nazario grew up in the South Bronx interested in art, but there were few outlets to quench his thirst. In the 1980s there weren’t many art school programs, so he was drawn to the art and color that surrounded him. The South Bronx landscape consisted of abandoned buildings and rubble, but it was the graffiti that decorated the walls and subway cars that caught Hector’s eye. “We didn’t know we were poor, for us it was just kids playing in our surroundings…it was just fun.” Hector chose the nickname Nicer for himself that remains his nom de plume. “It started as “Too Nice but then I found out there was a ‘Too Nice’ in Brooklyn. So I added an “er” [to Nice]. I liked the way it looked.”

Hector “Nicer” Nazario is considered one of the pioneers of the Hip Hop movement. Nicer and his crew would paint backdrops for Afrika Bambaataa’s shows and if you look closely you’ll see the work of Nicer and his friends in Bambaataa’s Planet Rock Video. That’s him scrawling on the glass near the end of the video in the ice blue cap and matching jacket.

“We didn’t realize we were doing work. The cash was alright but it was more about the paint. It was our lifestyle, our expression, [we were] identifying with the people from our community.” His mother didn’t think much of it at the time. “Eso no te va dejar nada” which translates to “That won’t leave you with anything.” Thirty years later, Nicer is still painting and his company Tats Cru are commissioned to do murals all over the world.