Dave Isay - Listening Is An Act Of Love: A Celebration Of American Life From The StoryCorps Project

S toryCorps is built on a few basic ideas:

That our storiesthe stories of everyday peopleare as interesting and important as the celebrity stories were bombarded with by the media every minute of the day.

That if we take the time to listen, well find wisdom, wonder, and poetry in the lives and stories of the people all around us.

That we all want to know our lives have mattered and we wont ever be forgotten.

That listening is an act of love.

Participating in StoryCorps is a simple process. First, you make an appointment to visit one of our recording booths. Bring anyone you chooseyour grandmother, your dad, your sister, your best friend, the waitress at the local diner whose story youve always been curious about. A trained StoryCorps facilitator will greet you, take you into the booth, and shut the door.

StoryCorps booth in Grand Central Terminal

Inside, the booth is completely silent. The lights are low. The room is cozy. You sit at a small table across from, lets say, your grandmother, looking into her eyes. Theres a microphone in front of each of you. The facilitator sits down in front of an audio console and presses Record. You begin to ask your questions:

What are the most important lessons youve learned in life?

What did your mother sing to you when you were a baby?

How do you want to be remembered?

At the end of forty minutes, two broadcast-quality CDs have been created. One goes home with you. A second becomes part of an archive at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress so that your great-great-grandchildren will someday be able to listen to the voices of you and your grandmother. Excerpts of interviews are broadcast each Friday on NPRs Morning Edition.

StoryCorps launched on October 23, 2003, in New Yorks Grand Central Terminal. The great oral historian Studs Terkel, who was ninety-one at the time, flew in from Chicago to cut the ribbon. Today we shall begin celebrating the lives of the uncelebrated! he proclaimed. Were in Grand Central Station. We know there was an architect, but who hung the iron? Who were the brick masons? Who swept the floors? These are the noncelebrated people of our country. In this booth the noncelebrated will speak of their lives. It might be a grandmother speaking to a grandchild. It might be a kid talking to his uncle. It might be a neighbor talking to a neighbor. And suddenly they will realize that they are the ones who have built this country!

Since that day weve added another permanent booth at Ground Zero and launched three mobile recording studios that travel the country year-round gathering stories. Each session represents an act of love and respect: forty minutes set aside to ask important questions and listen closely to the answers. The interviews honor our families, friends, and elders: the ordinary people we find all around us who, in their day-to-day acts of kindness, courage, and humanity, embody the true spirit of our nation.

StoryCorps is a project about permanence in an ever more disposable society. It reminds us of whats really important in the midst of all of lifes distractions. It encourages us to connect despite endless temptations to detach and disengage.

On the following pages are forty-nine stories selected from the ten thousand interviews weve recorded to date. We consider each StoryCorps session sacred, and we place great value on every story thats been recorded as part of the project. It is a joy and an honor for all of us at StoryCorps to do this work, and its a privilege to share these stories with you.

T he following stories were edited from transcripts of forty-minute StoryCorps interviews. We aimed to distill these stories without altering the tone or meaning of the original sessions. Words and phrases that read well are not always the best spoken moments, and the reverse is also the case. As a result, the phrasings of the same story in print and in audio may vary slightly.