Love Archives - Page 3 of 10 - StoryCorps

A Mother on the Challenges of Becoming a Teenage Parent

April Gibson and her teenage son, Gregory Bess, love talking to each other. Gregory says they can talk for hours, and that he feels he learns more from his mom than from school. But there was one subject that they hadn’t really explored.

So when the StoryCorps MobileBooth traveled to St. Paul, Minnesota recently, April invited her son to sit down with her for a recorded conversation.

Gregory asked about his mom’s childhood and their family’s past. He learned that his mom was a quiet kid who liked to write, and that his grandfather was a party DJ before becoming a pastor.

But April knew her 16-year-old had something more he wanted to talk about.

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Bottom photo: April Gibson and Gregory Bess in 2001. Courtesy of April Gibson.

Originally aired January 19, 2018, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

David Wynn and Carolyn Lyon

The scene could be a bleak one — a hospital room, a patient near death, and no family or loved ones present during their final moments. But David Wynn and Carolyn Lyon are determined to prevent the lonely from dying alone.

David and Carolyn are volunteers at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, California, where they sit at the bedside of dying patients. David has been doing these vigils since 2008; Carolyn began in 2011.

When they get a call from the hospital staff that someone is alone and nearing death, David and Carolyn rush to the hospital — even in the middle of the night — to sit by the side of a stranger.

Originally aired November 24, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Ronald Clark and Jamilah Clark

During the 1940s, custodians who worked for the New York Public Library often lived inside the buildings they tended. In exchange for cleaning and keeping the building secure at night, the library provided an apartment for the custodians and their families.

Ronald Clark’s father, Raymond, was one of those custodians. For three decades he lived with his family on the top floor of the Washington Heights branch on St. Nicholas Avenue in upper Manhattan. Three generations of the Clark family resided in that library until Ronald’s father retired in the late 1970s.

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After college, Ronald got a position as a professor teaching history at Cape Cod Community College.

At StoryCorps, Ronald told his daughter, Jamilah Clark, how living inside the library shaped the man he would become.

Originally aired October 13, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition and re-broadcast on February 22, 2019.

Bottom photo: Ronald Clark, his parents, and his daughter Jamilah. Credit: Clark family, courtesy of NYPL.

Darrow Brown and Juan Calvo

Now, a conversation that reminds us how being a father can be about much more than biology. 

In 2007, after volunteering to care for infants born to drug-addicted mothers in Baltimore, Juan Calvo knew he wanted to do more. So he and his husband, Darrow Brown, became foster dads. At StoryCorps, they remember the moment they met their first child and talk about the heartbreak and joy of being foster parents.

Two years later, they adopted their, son, Lucas, who is now 7 years old. They continue to open their home to foster children.

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Originally aired June 16, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Top Photo: Lucas, Darrow and Juan at their home in 2016. With permission from the Baltimore Sun.
Bottom Photo: From left, Juan, one of Darrow and Juan’s foster children, and Lucas on a post-reunification trip to the Maryland Science Center on May 22, 2016. Courtesy of Darrow Brown and Juan Calvo.

Kevin Fredericks, Isaiah Fredericks, and Josiah Fredericks

StoryCorps gives friends and family the chance to sit down together and ask questions they’ve always wanted to ask. Isaiah Fredericks and his younger brother, Josiah, made the most of that opportunity.

photosWhen this interview was recorded, Josiah was seven years old and Isaiah was nine. They came to StoryCorps in Los Angeles with their dad, Kevin, who fielded all sorts of questions from his curious sons — some of which we’ve never heard before.

Originally aired May 5, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Bottom photo: The Fredericks family in Reseda, CA in 2017. Courtesy of Kevin Fredericks.

Jane Vance and Lucinda Roy

On the morning of April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho—a student at Virginia Tech—shot and killed 32 students and teachers, wounding 17 others. Until the 2016 massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, it was the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history.

Artist Jane Vance and Professor Lucinda Roy were teaching at Virginia Tech that semester, although neither were present on the morning of the shooting.

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They returned to campus a week after the shooting when classes resumed for students who wanted to complete the term.

At StoryCorps, Jane Vance describes the inspiring way her class came together after the tragedy.


One of Jane’s former students, Kristen Wickham, was a freshman at the time of the shooting. Her friend Caitlin Hammaren was the only other student at Virginia Tech from Kristen’s home town of Westtown, NY, and was one of the 32 victims.

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At StoryCorps, Kristen sat down with her husband Andrew Baginski to remember Caitlin.

Originally aired April 14, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Top photo: Virginia Tech students sing “Amazing Grace” at the conclusion of a candle light vigil on the drill field Tuesday, April 17, 2007, in Blacksburg, Va.  (AP Photo/Roanoke Times, Josh Meltzer)
Center photo: Lucina Roy and Jane Vance on the Virginia Tech campus. (StoryCorps/Erica Yoon)
Bottom photo: Kristen Wickham and her husband, Andrew Baginski in New York City. (StoryCorps)

Fatuma Abdullahi, Annie Johnson, and Maryan Osman

Even though they’re only teenagers, Fatuma Abdullahi and her sister, Maryan Osman, have undertaken a long, complicated journey to get to where they are today.

When they were very young, the girls lost their parents during the civil war in Somalia, the country in which they were born. They were taken in by their grandmother until she was resettled in Australia. Fatuma and Maryan were to follow her there, but in the interim, Australia closed its borders to Somali refugees. The were shuffled between family members in Kenya until they were eventually left on their own. 

Then, in 2014, Fatuma and Maryan were resettled in the United States through Catholic Community Services of Utah. There they found a stable, loving home with a young couple, Annie and Randall Johnson, near Salt Lake City. They also live with their little brother, Roscoe, and their dog, Maddox.

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Fatuma and Maryan recently sat down with Annie to talk about what it’s been like — for all of them — to become a family.

Originally aired April 7, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Bottom photo: Randall Johnson, Maryan Osman, Fatuma Abdullahi, Roscoe Johnson, and Annie Johnson at their home in Murray, UT. 

Toni Henson and Camaran Henson

As a kid, Camaran Henson would stay up late listening to his grandfather, Leonard Simmons, tell stories about his experiences as police officer in Newark, New Jersey. 

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Leonard worked undercover for “The Bandit Squad” — a group of detectives who investigated armed robberies in the 1970s — and Camaran was convinced that his grandfather was a real-life superhero. Camaran’s mom, Toni, knows the feeling because she grew up hearing these tales as well.

Leonard died in 2013, but Toni and Camaran came to StoryCorps to pass his stories on — since long conversations are something of a family tradition.

Originally aired March 10, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Top photo: Camaran Henson with his grandfather, Leonard Simmons, ca. 1994. Courtesy of Toni Henson.

Chris López and Gabe López

Chris López always knew there was something different about her youngest child, Gabe. Assigned female at birth, Gabe felt like he was a boy.

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Gabe was always more comfortable in clothing traditionally worn by little boys — cargo pants and superhero shirts — but switched back and forth between these outfits and those often worn by little girls. Just after his seventh birthday, he convinced his parents to let him cut off his long hair and get a mohawk — a haircut he had been wanting for years. Around this time period, Gabe started dressing only as a boy and answering exclusively to “he”.

At first, Chris was concerned that Gabe, being so young, might change his mind. She was scared of how people would treat him as he transitioned. But after seeing how Gabe responded to the changes in his hair and clothing, she felt confident that he had made the right decision.

Gabe, who’s nine years old now, has been attending the same school since kindergarten. In the fall of 2016, when he started third grade, he began having others refer to him by his preferred gender pronouns —”he” and “him” — for the first time.

In 2015, the López family attended a camp for transgender, gender creative, and gender non-conforming youth in Tucson, Arizona.

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Gabe and his mother came to the StoryCorps MobileBooth to talk about how that camp transformed his life.

A version of this broadcast aired May 1, 2016, on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, and was rebroadcast on March 3, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition. 

Middle photo: Gabe López. Courtesy of Chris López.
Bottom photo: The López family.

Michael Benjamin Ryan and Michael John Ryan

As a juvenile court judge in Cleveland, Ohio, Judge Michael Ryan encounters many children who have had a tough start in life. At StoryCorps, Ryan explains to his 19-year-old son — also named Michael — that he knows where these kids are coming from.

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During his own childhood in Cleveland during the 1970s, Ryan lived in a violent household where he often witnessed his heroin-addicted mother endure beatings from his stepfather.

He sought refuge in books, went on to study law, and eventually gained a seat on the bench at Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court. But Ryan’s difficult childhood didn’t just motivate him to better his own life — it shaped who he is as a dad and what he wants for his own children.

Originally aired February 24, 2017, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Bottom photo: Judge Ryan and his son, Michael, at Michael’s graduation on May 31, 2015. Courtesy of the Ryan family.