From Edie: Honor the “living libraries” in your life by listening well and preserving their stories. Discover how recording family history captures wisdom, faith, and legacy—before precious memories are lost.
Dipping the Quill Deeper: Honoring Elders by Preserving Their Stories and Legacy
by Eva Marie Everson @EversonAuthor
In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders (1 Peter 5:5).
I received a call from my 95-year-old uncle, the oldest and only surviving brother of my mother. He had questions about my immediate family. Dates of marriages. Dates of births. Dates of deaths. “And how do you spell . . .”
“Uncle Jerry,” I shouted into the phone so my nearly deaf uncle could hear. “What in the world are you doing?”
“But don’t we have books and books on that?”
“Yes,” he said, “but this is a more detailed account of Mother and Daddy’s family. Us three kids. Their kids and grandkids.”
This was to be the first of many calls. Finally, he admitted, “I’m handwriting this. No one is going to be able to read it.” The defeat in his voice crushed my heart.
“Uncle Jerry,” I soothed. “How about I come up there and help you with this? I am a fast typist. We can do this together.”
Thrilled doesn’t begin to express his new emotion. I booked a flight. A few weeks later, I packed a bag that included my laptop and left for the airport.
As soon as I arrived at his Stone Mountain, Georgia home, he brought out scrapbooks, the pages he’d been working on, and family history books. I settled my laptop onto the kitchen table, created a new document, and got to work.
Both he and I enjoy studying our family’s rich history, so much that he had for me was information I already knew. But what I learned left me open-mouthed. For example, when I transcribed the part where our ancestor, Allen Strickland, ran off and married Mary Jones. When they returned home, her incensed father hauled them down to the courthouse to have the union annulled. Imagine his fury when he learned that, because they had “spent the night together,” he couldn’t do anything to legally tear asunder what God had joined together. In retaliation, Mary’s father adopted Allen. This meant that Mary was now married to her husband and her legal brother. I’m not sure what this meant for their many children.
Then there was the story about our widowered ancestor who married his son’s wife’s sister-in-law (I swear, there are branches of our family tree that just don’t fork!). This meant that he became both the father-in-law and brother-in-law of his son-in-law!
At other stories, I wept. For example, when I typed the story of the life Uncle Jerry and his first wife were creating in 1959. With two children—one about five and the other about fifteen months—they were in the process of moving from an apartment to their first purchased home when the phone rang. The voice on the other end relayed the message that my aunt’s father had just passed away. With half of their furniture in one place and half in another, they left for Manassas, Georgia where her parents lived. Two days later, they buried her father, then left for her sister’s home for the “family dinner” where they gathered around the kitchen table. My fifteen-month-old cousin sat in his 27-year-old mother’s lap. She asked someone for a glass of tea, then fell over dead.
“So,” I said to my uncle as tears spilled down my cheeks, “her mother buried her husband one day and then, a few days later, buried her daughter.”
My uncle swallowed hard as he whispered, “Yes.” Nearly seventy years have not lessened the pain.
My uncle—as well as any and all of our elderly—are our living libraries. They have stories. They have memories. They experienced parts of history we can only read about. When I wrote The One True Love of Alice-Ann (2017, Tyndale), a story about World War II Stateside, I interviewed family members (including this uncle), friends, and family members of friends who had lived through that era. I learned things that I may not have gleaned from a book, a document, or a Ken Burns video.
Although I was alive in 1962, I was a child. So, when I wrote Miss Beth Bettencourt (2026, Kregel), I repeated the same investigations. Hearing stories from those who are significantly older gathers more than just the facts; it also collects the emotions. The joy. The grief. The ties that bind.
What stories might you hear the next time you venture into a living library’s home? Grab your phone, ask the question, video the stories within the answers. Then listen . . . and listen good.
A wonderful post, as usual. I also grew up in a Southern, storytelling, family. As a child, many hours were spent listening as the grownups talked and retold tales of the family. I ended up publishing a book containing many of my favorites. Inside, I included the spiritual lessons a learned from their stories from long ago. That collection of stories is one of my favorite projects. The book's title is Mud Holes and Magnolias: Lessons on Faith from Mama's Stories. Our ancestors were a faith-filled, tough-as-nails bunch.
ReplyDeleteWhat a timely post, Eva Marie! Just yesterday, our daughter was filling in a family tree in her baby's book. She called for details and I was able to pass on some oral history which I learned from my dad (who passed 40 years ago). If she hadn't inquired, those memories could have been lost. Thanks for reminding us.
ReplyDeleteGoosebumps! I'm the story keeper of my family, with stories based on notes from both grandmothers, but one especially, and their letters from the Great Depression and WWII. All five of her sons served in WWII. She lost three of them and was widowed within a three year period. I was just a toddler, her oldest granddaughter. The book became Leora's Letters: The Story of Love and Loss for an Iowa Family During World War II. I also did one on her early years (including the Iowa pioneer years), Depression Era, and one of seven generations called Meadowlark Songs: A Motherline Legacy!
ReplyDeleteHow wonderful that your uncle is still lucid enough to put this book together and God bless you for writing it for him! What fascinating stories are in our past. I just wish I still have living relatives to tell me these stories.
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