Family Archives - Page 31 of 47 - StoryCorps

Bill Sayenga and Ellen Riek

Bill Sayenga’s father died when he was just four years old, leaving behind his mother, Marie, and his older sister Louise.

Sayenga1In order to support her family, Marie (pictured in 1964 in the player above) found a job with the Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, recorder of deeds office as a secretary, but her pay — about a dollar an hour and just over $2,000 a year — was miserable. Although it allowed her to provide a home for her family, the money was only enough for them to just get by.

For 11 years Marie worked at the recorder of deeds’ office, and according to Louise, she hated it. But for all that the job lacked, it did provide Marie with insights into the inner workings of her local government. She recognized the need for change and in 1949, Marie ran for tax collector in the borough of Bethel.

Being both a woman and a Democrat made her a long shot. For over 50 years, men had been elected tax collector, and for the previous 24, Merle Long held the office. Marie lost that first race, but in 1953 she made a second run and unseated Long by just nine votes.

Sayenga6Marie would hold onto the job for the next 24 years, winning five subsequent elections. In 1973, in her final race, she received more votes than anyone else on the ballot running for any office in the borough.

Marie died in February 1993 at the age of 83.

Bill came to StoryCorps with Marie’s granddaughter, Ellen Riek (pictured above), to remember their family’s influential and powerful matriarch.

Originally aired May 20, 2016, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Photos of Marie Sayenga and the borough of Bethel tax office courtesy of Louise Randolph.

Francisco and Frankie Preciado

When Francisco Preciado was six years old, his family moved from Mexico to the California. They entered the United States through the Bracero program, which, starting in 1942 and lasting more than 20 years, allowed Mexican workers to come to the U.S. to take temporary agricultural jobs.

preciadoNPRAt the time, Francisco spoke only Spanish, but he quickly learned English with the help of his teachers. This led him to dream of one day becoming a teacher himself, but financial demands and the need to support his family forced him to drop out of school and begin working full-time.

In the early 1980s, he took a job as a groundskeeper at Stanford University and was often accompanied to the college by his young son Frankie. Francisco hoped that one day Frankie would become a student at Stanford, and his dream came true with Frankie graduating from the university in 2007 with degrees in political science and Chicano(a) Studies.

Now 31 years old, Frankie is the executive director of the union that represents Stanford’s service and technical workers, and whose membership also includes his father.

Francisco and Frankie came to StoryCorps to talk about their relationship and their time together at Stanford—one as a maintenance man, the other as a student.

Originally aired May 13, 2016, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Above: Frankie with his father, Francisco, and his mother, Margarita, at his 2007 graduation from Stanford University.
Top: Frankie and Francisco at one of the fountains that Francisco takes care of on the campus of Stanford University.
Photos courtesy of the Preciado family.

Suzanne Lynch, Patricia Mishler, and Janette Lynch

In 1978, Patricia Mishler left her home in England and moved to the United States after marrying an American. The mother of two daughters—Suzanne, 13, and Janette, 11—her family first lived in Indiana before eventually resettling in Nashville, Tennessee.

Patricia, now 73 years old, was diagnosed about a year and a half ago with ALS. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, destroys motor neurons, the nerve cells that control muscle movement in the brain and spinal cord leading to progressive paralysis and eventual death. mishler1Most people with ALS die from respiratory failure, usually within three to five years from the onset of symptoms. (According to the National Institutes of Health, only about 10% of those with ALS survive for 10 years or more.)

A grandmother to more than a dozen grandchildren, Patricia once spent much of her free time pursuing favorite hobbies like gardening, sewing, and cooking. But since her diagnosis in October 2014, she has been unable to enjoy them any longer.

Suzanne (above left) and Janette (above right) recently brought their mother to StoryCorps to talk to her about what it’s been like for her to live with ALS, and also her thoughts on knowing that the disease will one day take her life.

Originally aired May 6, 2016, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Top Photo: Suzanne, Patricia, and Janette (left to right) in England on holiday in 1976 courtesy of Janette Lynch.

Vito de la Cruz and Maria Sefchick-Del Paso

Vito de la Cruz’s parents were already separated when he was born, and when he was 6 months old, his father left him in the care of his 19-year-old aunt, Iris de la Cruz, a woman he called Nena.

delacruz2Vito’s extended family traveled the migrant trail, finding work on farms across the United States. At 5 years old, Vito joined them in the fields. He remembers the excitement of traveling in the summers with his aunts, uncles, and grandmother from tomato fields in South Texas, to cherry orchards in Ohio, and sugar beet farms in North Dakota. During the days, they worked side-by-side, and in the evenings, they gathered together for dinner.

But their family’s migrant lifestyle was not easy; it was “equal parts hardship and poverty.” When he was 13, Border Patrol agents raided the farm where Vito and his family were working and rounded up undocumented workers. Witnessing workers’ fear of law enforcement struck a “profound chord in his being” and changed the course of his life.

Vito had always excelled in school, with Nena’s encouragement. She, herself, was the first person in the de la Cruz family to graduate high school, and she later went on to college. Following Nena’s example, Vito left South Texas for Yale University and then went on to attend law school at the University of California, Berkeley.

delacruz3After law school, Vito began volunteering with the United Farm Workers union and focused the early part of his legal career on immigrant and farmworker rights. Years later, he became a federal public defender in Nevada before moving to Bellevue, Washington, where he continues to practice civil rights law.

Vito came to StoryCorps with his wife, Maria Sefchick-Del Paso (pictured together above), to remember how his childhood and his loving Nena shaped his future.

Vito’s story is one of 53 work stories featured in our new book, Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work, now available in bookstores.

Originally aired April 22, 2016, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Photo courtesy of Vito de la Cruz.

Catherine Alaniz-Simonds and David Taylor

February marked 25 years since the end of the Gulf War.

Operation Desert Storm, the portion of the war focused on removing Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi military forces from neighboring Kuwait, began in January 1991.

alaniz-simonds3One of the war’s final battles, waged just before a cease-fire was declared, was a United States-led attack on the Iraqi controlled Jalibah Airfield by the 24th Infantry Division. Army Captain David Taylor was one of the officers leading the troops, and he feared that the plan would result in American soldiers dying as a result of friendly fired. But he did not say anything, and unfortunately, he was right.

Army Specialist Andy Alaniz was a member of a unit not under the command of Capt. Taylor, his vehicle turned sharply during the fight and he ended up in the line of fire. Andy died in the crossfire, one of 35 soldiers killed by friendly fire during the Gulf War.

At the time of his death, Andy, 20, had been married less than a year, and his wife, Catherine Alaniz-Simonds, was six months pregnant. While Andy was in Iraq they would send each other letters and Polaroid photos almost daily. Catherine would give him detailed updates about her pregnancy, and Andy would send back photos scrawled with messages like “Take care of the baby,” and “I love you.”

alaniz-simonds7Days after her baby shower, Catherine learned that on February 27, 1991, Andy had been killed.

Since his death, Catherine has sought out men from both Andy’s unit and the other units present at the airfield to help her better understand what happened to her husband that day. And since that time, now retired Colonel David Taylor has lived with the guilt of believing that he could have done something to prevent the death of his fellow solider.

Earlier this year, at a reunion of the 24th Infantry Division at Fort Stewart in Hinesville, Georgia, Catherine and David (pictured in the player above) met face-to-face for the first time. They sat down for StoryCorps to talk about the day Andy died and how it has impacted both of their lives.

Catherine and Andy’s daughter, Andee (pictured above with her mother and a photo of her father), will turn 25 later this year. In 1992, the photographer David Turnley won a World Press Photo of the Year prize for his image of the grief shown by Sergeant Ken Kozakiewicz who was being evacuated to a hospital by helicopter upon learning that the body bag accompanying him and fellow wounded soldier Corporal Michael Tsangarakis contained the remains of his friend, Andy Alaniz.

Click here to see that image.

Originally aired April 9, 2016, on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday.

Jeanne Abel and Alan Abel

In the 1964 presidential election, Republican Senator Barry Goldwater from Arizona ran against Democratic incumbent Lyndon Johnson who had assumed office following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. LBJ won in a landslide, but there was another candidate in the race who has largely been forgotten by history: Mrs. Yetta Bronstein, a Jewish housewife from the Bronx.

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One reason Mrs. Bronstein remains absent from the history books is that although she ran, she didn’t actually exist. She was the creation of professional media pranksters Alan and Jeanne Abel. The husband and wife team cooked up Yetta while doing a nightclub act, and decided she should run for the highest office in the land. Registering her as a write-in candidate, she was listed as a member of the Best Party, with a platform that included national bingo and lowering the voting age to 18 so that juvenile delinquents would have something to do (the 26th Amendment was ratified 1971).

Jeanne, a gifted improviser, posed as Yetta, promising voters 16 ounces in every pound and offering free hot dogs and bagels in exchange for votes. She only gave reporters radio interviews because unlike Jeanne who was in her 20s, Yetta was the middle-aged wife of a New York City cab driver. At one point during the campaign, she wrote to President Johnson offering to end her run if he would name her as his running mate (Click here to read Yetta’s letter). Alan, her campaign manager, perpetuated the ruse by using a photo of his own Jewish mother in their election materials.

The Yetta Bronstein hoax is just one of scores of pranks the Abels orchestrated over the past 60 years. The one they are best known for is attempting to advance the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (SINA), which aimed, in the name of morality, to put pants on the world’s creatures. SINA’s slogan was, “A nude horse is a rude horse.”

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Proving that no prank can go too far, Alan once even faked his own death, leading to a January 2, 1980, obituary in The New York Times. Two days later, for the first time in their history, the newspaper of record ran a retraction of an obituary explaining, “An obituary in The New York Times on Wednesday reported incorrectly that Alan Abel was dead. Mr. Abel held a news conference yesterday…”

The audio for this story includes archival recordings of live radio appearances Jeanne made during the 1964 and 1968 presidential campaigns when Yetta ran a second time for president. In between her runs at the White House, Yetta also ran for mayor of New York City, a seat in Britain’s parliament, and wrote a book, The President I Almost Was by Yetta Bronstein. Years later, their daughter, Jenny Abel, produced and directed a film about her father titled “Able Raises Cain.”

Asked if they’d consider running Yetta against the current field of presidential hopefuls, Jeanne responded, “The comedy is already happening.”

Jeanne and Alan sat down for StoryCorps in their rural Connecticut home. Surrounded by countless boxes filled with documentation of their life’s work, they tell the true story behind their fake candidate.

Click here for more information on the Abel’s hoaxes.

Originally aired April 1, 2016, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Archival photos courtesy of Jenny Abel.

Eva Vega-Olds and Leonardo Vega

In November 2015, Leonardo Vega was diagnosed with liver and lung cancer.

photo_1453844228000After multiple unsuccessful rounds of chemotherapy, he left the hospital and returned to his New Jersey home to spend his remaining days receiving hospice care while surrounded by his family. His eldest daughter, Eva Vega-Olds, decided to use the StoryCorps app to capture some of her father’s memories and preserve the sound of his voice.

During their time together, Leonardo was bedridden and hooked up to an oxygen tank. Finding the strength to answer questions was difficult, so Eva also took the opportunity to tell her father how much he has meant to her.

This recording turned out to be the last conversation they ever had together. Leonardo died days later on January 29, 2016, at the age of 73. Soon after, Eva came to StoryCorps to remember a hardworking man with a great sense of humor who loved his family.

Originally aired March 25, 2016, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Top Photo: Eva and Leonardo on her wedding day in May 2009.
Above Photo: Eva and Leonardo on January 26, 2016.

Trista James, Tanya James and Michelle Paugh

Tanya James was 17 years old when her father died in 1978. His death left her and her mother, Beryle Hanlin, struggling financially. So they did what so many generations of West Virginians before them had done—they went to work in the coal mines.

At the time, almost 99 percent of miners were men, and some still believed in the old superstition that a woman setting foot in a coal mine brought bad luck. Many also assumed that the few women who took the job only did so to find a husband. Harassment, both verbal and physical, was not uncommon, and a 1979 survey found that more than three-quarters of female coal miners had been sexually propositioned at work, and that 17 percent had been physically attacked.

Both Tanya and Beryle regularly faced hostility from their male colleagues. Early in her career, Tanya was sent to a remote part of the mine with a male colleague who kept trying to touch her. Unable to convince him to stop by simply telling him “No,” Tanya put an end to his behavior by kneeing him in the groin.

But none of this discouraged Tanya and she never considered quitting. Her career underground lasted more than 20 years and she recently became the first woman in her union’s 124-year history elected to international office. She came to StoryCorps with her daughters, Trista James (above left) and Michelle Paugh (above right), to tell them what it was like for her early in her mining career.

Originally aired March 18, 2016, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Zeek Taylor and Dick Titus

Dick Titus and Zeek Taylor met in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1971. Zeek was openly gay having already come out to his friends and family, but Dick was still in the closet with the added burden of having his family living close by.

TItus3In order for the two of them to be together, they decided to leave Memphis and move to Fayetteville, Arkansas, a city that would put some distance between Dick and his family, and where he knew he could find work as an electrician. But when they got there, Dick was convinced that he would have to continue to remain closeted after encountering homophobia on job sites, leading him to believe that he would lose work if anyone discovered that he was gay.

In order to protect Dick (pictured on the right), they decided to buy two homes—one to live in together and another to use as a dummy house for Dick in case any of his fellow workers wanted to come by at the end of the day. They also established a code in case they ran into any of the people Dick worked with while they were out together. Dick’s colleagues called him “Oscar,” so when they were in public and heard someone use the name, Zeek (pictured on the left) would pretend that they did not know each other.

Today, Dick is out to his friends and family. They came to StoryCorps to recall their journey from owners of multiple homes for 13 years, to married owners of a single home together in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

Originally aired March 4, 2016, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Susan Kaphammer and Joshua Myers

Joshua Myers, 29, was born with Down syndrome. Growing up, he often felt overwhelmed by his condition and struggled with depression.

Once, when he was a teenager, Joshua attempted suicide by walking into the middle of a busy intersection, but was saved by a passing motorist.

For his mother, Susan Kaphammer, it was difficult to watch her son suffer and know that there was very little that she could do to make his pain go away.

With those tough times behind them, Joshua and Susan came to StoryCorps to discuss what he now loves about his life, and his dreams for the future.

Originally aired February 19, 2016, on NPR’s Morning Edition.