“I never grew out of the phase of knowing all the dinosaur names.”

Brenda Hunda is an invertebrate paleontologist at the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History and Science. She grew up in Saskatchewan, Canada, where there are a lot of dinosaur fossils. During her StoryCorps interview, Brenda told her friend and museum volunteer, Bob Bergstein, that she knew what she wanted to be from a young age.

My mother would tell you that I wanted to be a paleontologist since I was three, even though at the age of three I didn’t know what it was called, but I certainly knew what dinosaurs were. I never grew out of the phase of knowing all the dinosaur names and having all the dinosaur books.

After studying at the University of Alberta, Brenda came to the United States to work on her Ph.D. at the University of California – Riverside. While at UC Riverside, Brenda started coming to Cincinnati over the summers to do research. After finishing her Ph.D., Brenda moved to Cincinnati and got a job at the museum.

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Charlie “Whip” Davis

Now…

And then…

Charlie Davis (shown here with his daughter, Stacey Davis Folmar, and with the legendary pitcher Satchel Paige) got his nickname from Charlie Pride, the country singer and one-time baseball player who was his roommate when the two played for the Memphis Red Sox of the Negro American League, in the days before the integration of professional baseball. Pride came up with “Whip” after Mr. Davis, a pitcher, won twenty games in a row and relieved Paige in the East/West All Star game in 1943.

These days Mr. Davis owns and operates an auto repair shop in Cincinnati. He said in his StoryCorps conversation with Stacey that some of his former teammates were unable ever to talk about their playing days, because of the anger they had from playing in a segregated league. Davis says he understands this completely, but adds: “For me, it was still the best days of my life.”