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.

Photo of the outside of the exhibition courtesy of Beth Allen.

Anny Pena and Jonny Pena

Marine Sgt. Anny and Staff Sgt. Jonny Pena met while stationed in Arizona.

After dating for a couple years they got married in 2007, and they were both active duty. But after their first child was born, they decided Anny would leave the military–and that Jonny would stay.

At StoryCorps, they talked about the challenges they faced as military spouses–and what it was like when Jonny came home from Afghanistan in 2012.

Originally aired July 4, 2015 on NPR’s Weekend Edition.

Yvette Benavidez Garcia and Rene Garcia

In 1981 Army Master Sergeant Roy P. Benavidez, a Green Beret, received the Medal of Honor for his service during the Vietnam War.

On his first tour there, he was severely injured by a land mine and told that he’d never walk again. After a year of rehabilitation, he walked out of the hospital and eventually returned to Vietnam for a second tour.

That’s when he spearheaded a daring rescue, saving the lives of eight fellow soldiers. In the process his jaw was broken and he was shot 37 times.

At StoryCorps, his daughter Yvette Benavidez Garcia and her husband, Rene, remember the aftermath of the battle.

Roy P. Benavidez died in 1998.

Click here to watch President Ronald Reagan present Roy P. Benavidez with the Medal of Honor in 1981.

Originally aired July 3, 2015, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Photo courtesy of the Benavidez family.

Mario Loiseau and Mabou Loiseau

Mario Loiseau is a Haitian immigrant who works two jobs, including long hours as a parking lot attendant in New York City.

He does this to help pay for his 9-year-old daughter, Mabou’s, tutoring. She is a science and language prodigy and is already studying college-level algebra.

The two of them sat down together for StoryCorps, so Mabou could ask him some questions.

Originally aired June 19, 2015, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Photo courtesy of the Louiseau family.

Patrick Kreifels and Michelle Kreifels

Michelle Kreifels was born with an intellectual disability. She grew up on a farm in rural Nebraska, the fifth of seven children, and her family treated her the same as everyone else.

Her youngest brother, Patrick, brought Michelle to StoryCorps to talk about their relationship and how their differences have brought them together.

Originally aired June 7, 2015, on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday.

Santiago Arredondo and Aimee Arredondo

Santiago Arredondo, 32, grew up in Southern California, where he learned his strong work ethic from his family.

He recently recorded a StoryCorps interview with his wife, Aimee, to honor the most influential person in his life: his grandfather, Jose Guadalupe Enrique Sanchez, whose portrait he has tattooed on his arm.

Originally aired May 29, 2015, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

You can read more stories like this one in our book 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.

Brent Hendricks and Barbra Hendricks

When Barbra Hendricks gave birth to her daughter in 1987, she was surprised when Tiffany was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis (CF). Three years later, when her son Brent was born, he also was diagnosed with CF.

Cystic Fibrosis is a genetic disease that mainly affects the digestive system and lungs. There is no cure.

In 2002 at the age of 15, Tiffany died. In March of this year Barbra and Brent came to the StoryCorps booth in Atlanta to remember Tiffany, discuss what it is like for Brent to live with CF, the pain of losing a child, and Brent’s thoughts on death.

Originally aired May 1, 2015, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Photo courtesy of the Hendricks family.

Nicholas Heyward Sr.

This is the story of a father’s grief at losing his son to a policeman’s bullet. It happened two decades before Ferguson, Baltimore, Tamir Rice, or Eric Garner, and it received little or no national attention.

In 1994, Nicholas Naquan Heyward Jr. was a 13-year-old living in Brooklyn, NY. One day, he and his friends were playing with toy guns in the stairwell of their housing complex when an NYPD officer shot and killed him.

20 years after his death, his father, Nicholas Heyward Sr. (pictured above), came to StoryCorps to remember his son, pictured at left the year before he was killed.

Originally aired May 15, 2015, on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Photo courtesy of Nicholas Heyward Sr.

Scott Skiles and Zach Skiles

Marine Corporal Zach Skiles was deployed to Iraq in 2003 at the start of the United States invasion. While serving on the frontlines, he lost five of his friends within a two-week period.

When he returned home, Zach found it difficult to hold down a job and soon after found himself homeless.

At StoryCorps, Zach sat down with his father, Scott, to talk about the difficulties he faced after the war and how he got back on his feet.

Where are they now?

In 2018, Zach is in his fourth and final academic year of a PhD program in clinical psychology. He looks forward to using his degree to help other veterans in need.

Photo: Zach Skiles (right) with his father Scott (left) at their StoryCorps interview in San Francisco, CA. Photo by Geraldine Ah-Sue for StoryCorps.

Originally aired April 18, 2015, on NPR’s Weekend Edition.

Willie Watson and PJ Allen

On the morning of April 19, 1995, a truck bomb exploded at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. It was the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.

The blast was equal to nearly 4000 pounds of TNT. It killed 168 people. Hundreds more were injured.

The federal office building also housed a day care center. The explosives-laden truck was parked directly beneath it.

Of the 21 children there that morning, only 6 survived.

PJ Allen was one of the survivors. He suffered broken bones, severe burns, and damage to his lungs from inhaling debris.

At StoryCorps in Oklahoma City, he spoke with his father, Willie Watson.

Listen to another survivor story here.

Originally aired April 17, 2015 on NPR’s Morning Edition.