Andy Downs and Angelia Sheer
On Oct 4, 1971, George Giffe, a 35-year-old Tennessee man suffering from mental illness, hijacked a charter plane at gunpoint from the Nashville airport. He also claimed to be in possession of a bomb.
Running low on fuel, the plane’s pilot landed in Jacksonville, FL, where the FBI was waiting. After a brief standoff, Giffe killed the two hostages who remained onboard before turning the gun on himself.
One of the two was Brent Downs—the pilot of the plane.
At StoryCorps, Brent’s son Andy (pictured above with his mother Janie and his father) spoke with Angelia Sheer, the daughter of the man who killed his father.
This tragedy helped shape the way in which law enforcement subsequently handled hijackings after a federal appeals court ruled in 1975 that the FBI acted negligently when agents ignored the safety of the people onboard (the plane is pictured above sitting on the tarmac in Jacksonville, FL).
Originally aired October 2, 2015, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Photos courtesy of Andy Downs.
Chassitty Saldana and Noramay Cadena
Noramay Cadena is a mechanical engineer with several degrees from MIT.
Her family came to the U.S. from Mexico. They settled in Los Angeles where her parents worked in factories.
Noramay (pictured above right) came to StoryCorps with her teenage daughter, Chassitty Saldana (pictured above left), to remember one summer when, as a teenager, her parents brought her to work.
During her engineering career, Noramay has worked to improve conditions at factories like the ones where her parents still work.
Originally aired September 25, 2015, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Photo courtesy of the Cadena family.
Isaac Feliciano
Isaac Feliciano has been working at Brooklyn’s historic Green-Wood cemetery for 21 years. He has done many jobs there and is currently a field foreman, supervising landscape and maintenance workers on the grounds.
On September 11, 2001 he dropped his wife off at the subway so she could get to her job at Marsh & McLennan in the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
He then headed to work at Green-Wood.
Rosa Maria Feliciano, pictured at left with her daughters, Amanda and Alexis, was 30 years old when she was killed on September 11, 2001. Today, Isaac is a single father raising their two daughters.
Originally aired September 11, 2015, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Photo courtesy of the Feliciano family.
Donna Orolin
After Army Private First Class Brian Orolin returned from Afghanistan in 2011, everything seemed fine. But as the years went by, his wife, Donna, could tell something wasn’t right.
He became paranoid, suffered constant headaches, and would isolate himself in his bedroom with the lights dimmed.
Then, on November 19, Brian left his home and family. He’s been missing ever since.
At StoryCorps, Donna remembered the day he returned from Afghanistan, and the moments before he disappeared.
If anyone has information regarding Brian’s whereabouts, please contact the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office near Spring, Texas.
Originally aired September 5, 2015, on NPR’s Weekend Edition.
Photo courtesy of Donna Orolin.
Herman Heyn and John Heyn
If you’ve ever visited Fells Point on the Baltimore waterfront, you may have noticed an older man with a telescope.
His name is Herman Heyn,
the city’s street corner astronomer.
For decades he’s set up in the same spot, inviting passers-by to peer through his telescope.
At StoryCorps, Herman (left) sat down with his nephew, John (right), to remember how he became a self-proclaimed “star hustler.”
Originally aired August 28, 2015, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Photo by Kevin & Sonia McCarthy, courtesy of Herman Heyn.
Burnell Cotlon and Lillie Cotlon
For New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, the section of the city hit hardest by Hurricane Katrina and the flooding that followed, recovery has been slow.
Nearly ten years after the storm, the neighborhood still did not have a single grocery store. But Ninth Ward resident Burnell Cotlon (pictured above, right) set out to change that.
Using money saved while working at fast food restaurants and dollar stores, he bought a dilapidated building on an empty block. And in 2014 he opened the Lower Ninth Ward’s first grocery store since the storm. At StoryCorps, he sat down with his mother, Lillie (pictured above, left), to remember the days after the flood.
This story is featured in Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work, a collection that celebrate the passion, determination, and courage it takes to pursue the work we feel called to do.
Callings is now available from Penguin Books. Get the book at our neighborhood bookstore, Greenlight Bookstore, or find it at your local bookstore.
To help Burnell further his dream of expanding the Lower 9th Ward Market, visit his Go Fund Me page.
Originally aired August 8, 2015, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Photos courtesy of Daniel Schergen, Ian Spencer Cook, and Hanna Rasanen for StoryCorps.
Andrea Cleveland and Monica Harwell
In 1991, Monica Harwell became the first woman to climb electric utility poles for ConEdison in New York.
As a line constructor, her job was to install power lines dozens of feet in the air.
She worked alongside men whose families had been working on the lines for generations.
At StoryCorps, Monica (right) tells her daughter, Andrea Cleveland (left)—who now also works for ConEdison—that many of them never thought she’d make it.
Originally aired August 14, 2015, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Photo courtesy of Monica Harwell.
Roberto Olivera and Debra Olivera
Roberto Olivera grew up in the 1960s just outside of Los Angeles, California.
As a teenager, he worked multiple jobs to support his family, but would come home to a physically and verbally abusive stepfather.
At StoryCorps, Roberto tells his wife, Debra, about how his mother helped him escape.
Originally aired August 7, 2015, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Lisa Torello and Tony Cistaro
In December of 1965, Sgt. 1st Class Carl Torello was serving with the Special Forces in Vietnam when he was killed by a roadside bomb. His daughter, Sgt. Major Lisa Torello, was 5 years old at the time.
Almost 50 years later, she connected with Tony Cistaro, the only survivor of the attack that killed her father. Their conversation was recorded in Washington DC just one day after they first met.
Originally aired May 22, 2015, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
January 6, 1966, obituary courtesy of The Oswego Valley News.
Lucille Horn and Barbara Horn
For decades, Brooklyn’s Coney Island was known for sideshows featuring tattooed ladies, sword swallowers, and Dr. Martin Couney’s incubator babies.
Dr. Couney pioneered the use of incubators to keep premature infants alive in the late 1800s. But the medical establishment initially rejected the practice. So, each summer for 40 years, Dr. Couney funded his work by setting up an exhibition of the babies and charging the public admission.
Parents didn’t have to pay for the medical care, and many children survived who would have never had a chance otherwise.
Ninety-five-year-old Lucille Horn was one of them. Here, she tells her daughter, Barbara, about spending the summer of 1920 in an incubator on Coney Island.
Originally aired July 10, 2015, on NPR’s Morning Edition.