As a Facilitator, I have been present for a number of conversations with people experiencing memory loss as part of the StoryCorps Memory Loss Initiative. Sometimes these conversations are an opportunity for the person with memory loss to share his or her stories, but it is not always so straightforward. In one conversation, a son and his father sat with their sensational mother and wife, whose stroke had left her unable to speak more than a few words. She listened to her husband recount their four year courtship through letters while he served in World War II.

Her son also remembered her devotion to her children and the love for theater she instilled in him. She was quiet and unresponsive during the interview but dazzled everyone near the end with a smile and the words, “Them were the days.” While her voice barely registers on the recording, she is present in the voices of loved ones as they narrate her story. She gently asked him what his very favorite song was, aware that he might not know. He thought for a moment and then replied it was one from his grandmother that goes, “When I get [sic] too old to dream / I’ll have you to remember.”

The words, originally from a love song written by Oscar Hammerstein in 1934, were unexpectedly poetic in the moment. They capture the inevitability of loss associated with aging and also the way that the memory of a loved one endures as other details fade. This is something I have often seen as people make their recording; an individual may have difficulty remembering many details or events yet they are confident in expressing love for the person sitting across from them.

Beyond that is the fear that eventually even this relationship will be forgotten, along with the details of a person’s life–the very things that make up a personal history and a personality. In this case, it is the spouse, friend, son or daughter who carries the stories and becomes the one “to remember.”

At age seven, Ralph lost his hearing to scarlet fever, the same disease that left Helen Keller and Thomas Edison deaf in childhood. Still, Ralph was determined to stay in public school. He taught himself to read lips and was the first hearing-impaired student to graduate with honors from his grade school in Brooklyn. Although Ralph had learned to speak and succeed on his own in school, his deafness was deemed “disruptive” in high school. Ralph was sent to a trade school to learn typesetting and printing– a profession where his intelligence and sharp eyes could be put to use and his ears wouldn’t be affected by the cacophonous printing room.

Ralph had desperately wanted to be a doctor, but in the 1940s he set his sights on serving his country in World War II. He told us each time he failed the medical entrance exam, he would put his test result on the train tracks until it was ripped to shreds and try again. After multiple attempts at enlisting, Ralph secured a non-combat job with the Navy.

As a child, Ralph feared that relying on sign language would isolate him. His decision to remain in mainstream schools and read lips instead of signing was also rooted in the public perception of deafness at the time. Ralph saw people who signed in public being stared at and ridiculed. Fifty years later, Ralph would find out that he could be an ideal candidate for a cochlear implant, a procedure that could allow him to “hear” with a surgically implanted electronic device. Ralph declined the surgery, electing to continue reading lips and speaking as he had been his whole life.

Ralph’s story stood in stark contrast to another recent StoryCorps interview in Washington, D.C.? Taye Akinola, born deaf almost 70 years after Ralph, was also a candidate for a cochlear implant whose parents decided against the surgery. Today, Taye speaks and uses hearing aids but also signs, and is a graduate student at Gallaudet University. Taye is able to study at a university that has become a center for deaf culture, political discourse, and empowerment. From Ralph’s struggle to stay in public high school to Taye’s master’s degree in Deaf Studies, the changes in public understanding and resources are striking.

Today, Ralph keeps pictures of his daughter in her police uniform and his granddaughter in his front pocket, proud proof of the life he built for his family despite a disability that was viewed so differently decades ago.