A Soldier on Suffering from PTSD and Finding a Home in Fashion
Army Specialist Duane Topping served three tours in Iraq before medically retiring in 2012.
Although he comes across as a tough guy with his tattoos and leather jacket, while deployed he found comfort from an unlikely place. Duane came to StoryCorps with his wife, Jamie Topping, to recall the difficulties of transitioning to civilian life while struggling with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Today, Duane and Jamie run a successful design house out of Denver, Colorado. In September, they returned home from their first official show at New York Fashion Week.
Top photo: Jamie and Duane Topping pose during their StoryCorps interview in the Topping Designs studio in Wheat Ridge, Colorado on May 17, 2018. Photo by Mia Warren for StoryCorps.
Middle photo: Duane Topping poses in Kuwait while deployed as an Army Specialist in 2006, during his second deployment to Iraq. Courtesy of Duane Topping.
Bottom photo: Duane Topping works at his design studio in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. Photo by Mia Warren for StoryCorps.
Originally aired October 6, 2018, on NPR’s Weekend Edition.
The Country’s Oldest Female BMX Bike Racer on Her Thrills and Spills
At nearly 70 years old, Kittie Weston-Knauer is the oldest female BMX racer in the United States.
When she started competing in off-road bicycle races, or BMX, in the late 1980s she was often the only woman on the track. It was her son Max Knauer, a championship BMX rider himself, who introduced her to the sport when he was ten years old.
While Max, now 40, is currently retired from the sport, Kittie has no plans to quit any time soon. She looks forward to the day she can watch her grandchildren hit the track — and hopes Max will start competing again with them, too.
Top photo: Max Knauer and Kittie Weston-Knauer at their StoryCorps interview in Des Moines, Iowa on April 20, 2018.
Bottom photo: Max Knauer assists Kittie Weston-Knauer as she prepares to start her first-ever BMX race on Mother’s Day of 1988. Courtesy of Kittie Weston-Knauer.
Originally aired May 11, 2018, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Nudist Couple on Falling in Love and the Mistake Only a Nudist Would Make
We’re used to people baring their souls at StoryCorps, but this is a story about baring quite a bit more.
Ten years ago, on Tracia Kraemer’s 40th birthday, she wanted to do something she’d never done before. So she gathered her courage and paid a visit to the last surviving nudist park in the state of Louisiana, Indian Hills.
She figured she’d at least wind up with a good story, but as she remembers in this conversation with her husband Patrick, she came away with a whole lot more.
Tracia and Patrick married in 2013. Together they managed Indian Hills for several years.
Last fall, they took off in an RV for a year-long adventure visiting nudist establishments across the country.
Top photo: Patrick and Tracia Kraemer pose nude behind a tractor at the Indian Hills Nudist Park in 2015. Courtesy David Grunman / The Times-Picayune.
Bottom photo: Patrick and Tracia Kraemer at their StoryCorps interview in New Orleans, Louisiana in February of 2018.
Originally aired May 4, 2018, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
A Daughter Comes to Terms with Her Father’s Time in Prison
In this conversation recorded in Hartford, Connecticut, Abby Gagliardo sat down with her dad, Ralph, to talk about a confusing time for their family.
Abby knew her dad was sent to prison for larceny when she was a kid. But she didn’t understand why.
When they came to StoryCorps, Ralph had been out of prison for five years, and Abby came to understand more fully what happened.
Photo: Ralph Gagliardo, holding his daughter, Abby, the day after she was born in 2000. Courtesy Ralph Gagliardo.
In 2018, Abby is 17 and Ralph has been sober since 2012. He is also pursuing his bachelor’s degree, with plans to attend law school.
Ralph and Abby’s conversation was recorded through the StoryCorps Justice Project, which preserves and amplifies the stories of people who have been directly impacted by mass incarceration. Original support for the Justice Project was provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Safety and Justice Challenge, #RethinkJails and the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation.
Originally aired April, 20, 2018, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Religious School Rape and Abuse Survivors Confront The Past
When the New Bethany Home for Girls in Arcadia, Louisiana opened in 1971, the religious reform school was known as a safe haven for “wayward girls.”
Over the next three decades, law enforcement officials repeatedly investigated claims of physical and psychological child abuse at the school. Girls routinely ran away, and state officials raided the compound twice and removed children from the home.
Joanna Wright was 16 years old when she first arrived. She had been sexually abused at home and hoped the school would be a refuge. But when she got there, she was raped by the man in charge of the school.
For years, Joanna thought she was the only one. It wasn’t until years later that she connected with other former students, including Tara Cummings, who survived physical and psychological abuse while at New Bethany.
At StoryCorps, they shared difficult memories from their childhoods. Joanna begins their conversation.
In 2014, a group of women — including Joanna and Tara — came forward to say they were raped and abused at the school.
After a year-long investigation, a grand jury declined to indict the founder of the school. He died the following month.
Top photo: Joanna Wright with Tara Cummings in Cypress, Texas. Morgan Feigal-Stickles for StoryCorps.
Middle photo: Outside the gates of the New Bethany Home for Girls in an archival photo from 1988. Ellis Lucia for the Times-Picayune.
Originally aired February 23, 2018, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
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.
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.
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.
Judy Charest and Harold Hogue
On December 24, 1956, Marguerite Hunt drove with her 3-month-old daughter, Judy, to the Shelby Street Bridge (now called the John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge) in Nashville, Tennessee, got out of her car, and with her baby in her arms, jumped 90 feet into the cold waters of the Cumberland River.
Harold Hogue, an engineer with the Nashville Bridge Company was at work in a nearby building and happened to see the incident unfold through an office window. Immediately, he and his colleague, Jack Knox, ran to the river and saw Marguerite in the water holding onto a piece of rebar pleading for someone to save her baby. Jack jumped into the water and grabbed Judy, swam back to shore, handed her to Harold, and headed back into the river in an attempt to now save Marguerite. Harold rushed Judy to the first aid station in the Nashville Bridge Company building and left the infant in the care of a nurse; with help from others, including Harold, Marguerite was saved as well.
When Judy Charest was 21 years old, Marguerite was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It was also the first time Judy learned of the Christmas Eve incident on the bridge. Jack passed away in 2005, and Marguerite died in 2015. Recently, Harold told his grandson about the rescue and he was able to track down Judy allowing them to meet again almost 60 years after Harold helped save her life.
At StoryCorps, Judy and Harold discuss both of their meetings.
Originally aired December 23, 2016, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
Above: Rescuers pull Marguerite Hunt onto the shore of the Cumberland River. Harold Hogue is in the foreground in a white shirt, dark pants, and wearing a watch. Originally published Christmas Eve 1956, photo courtesy of Mike Hudgins/The Nashville Retrospect.
Francisco Ortega and Kaya Ortega
Growing up in rural Tijuana, Mexico, Francisco Ortega was among the youngest of his family’s 10 children. In 1975, his parents made the difficult decision to leave him and his siblings in the care of his beloved aunt, Trinidad, and move to Los Angeles to find work. Once there, his father worked as a busboy and his mother as a seamstress in a clothing factory; each month they sent back money for food and clothing.
Only about 6 years old when his parents left, Francisco was an intuitive, energetic, and excitable boy. He spent hours playing in the hills and fruit orchards of Tijuana, and chasing rattlesnakes with his dogs. He also acted up a lot and often gave his aunt a hard time.
He didn’t see his parents for nearly three and a half years, and couldn’t understand why they left. He missed his mother terribly but through hard work his parents became more financially stable, and in 1978, 9-year-old Francisco joined them in Los Angeles.
At StoryCorps, Francisco—who works to strengthen relationships between the Los Angeles Police Department and the community—shares memories of his childhood in Tijuana with his 16-year-old daughter, Kaya, and tells her about the day he left Mexico to reunite with his parents in Los Angeles.
Originally aired December 16, 2016, on NPR’s Morning Edition.