Dave Isay - All There Is: Love Stories from StoryCorps

ALSO BY DAVE ISAY

Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project

Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps

All There Is

Love Stories from StoryCorps

DAVE ISAY

THE PENGUIN PRESS

New York

2012

THE PENGUIN PRESS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in 2012 by The Penguin Press,

a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright Sound Portraits Productions, Inc., 2012

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

All there is : love stories from Storycorps / [edited and with an introduction by] Dave Isay.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-101-55637-5

1. LoveAnecdotes. 2. United StatesBiographyAnecdotes. 3. InterviewsUnited States. 4. Oral history. 5. StoryCorps (Project) I. Isay, David. II. StoryCorps (Project)

HQ801.A2A55 2012

302.3dc23

2011029942

Designed by Amanda Dewey

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

I N MEMORY OF
L ILLIE M AE L OVE 19572010

Love is all there is... When you take your last breath you remember the people you love, how much love you inspired, and how much love you gave.

LILLIE LOVE , StoryCorps Facilitator

Lillie Love with fellow Facilitator Anthony Knight at StoryCorps Atlanta

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

S toryCorps launched in October 2003, when we opened our first booth in Grand Central Terminal in New York City. Its a very simple idea. You make an appointment to bring in anyone you want to honor by listening. When you arrive at the booth youre met by a StoryCorps facilitator who takes you inside and sits you across a small table from, say, your grandmother. You face one another, a microphone in front of each of you, and for the next forty minutes you ask questions and listen. Many people think of their interview sessions as: If I had only forty minutes left with this person, what would I want to ask?

Needless to say, the interviews are often quite intense. I am always hearing from participants who say that the time they spent recording at StoryCorps was among the most important forty minutes of their lives. At the end of the session you walk out with a CD of your interview, and with your permission, a second copy goes to the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, so that your great-great-great-grandchildren can someday get to know your grandmother through her voice and story.

Since our launch StoryCorps has spread from coast to coast. To date nearly seventy-five thousand people, representing the breadth of the American experience, have participated in the project. Millions more have heard or seen edited excerpts of these interviews on NPR, PBS, and the Webor in books like this. We hope that recording a StoryCorps interview reminds participants how much their lives matter and that experiencing these stories illustrates the power, strength, and wisdom we can find in the voices of the people all around us when we take the time to listen.

T he book you hold in your hands cuts right to the heart of our efforts. StoryCorps is by its nature a project about the transmission of wisdom across generations. Almost all of the interviews we collect touch on the great themes of human existence, andas weve learned after recording thousands upon thousands of sessionsthere can be no question that the greatest of these themes is love.

While conversations about love in all its forms are captured through StoryCorps, we chose to devote this book to stories about romantic love. All There Is is divided into three sections, which correspond to the three types of love stories we hear about most often: falling in love; remembering a loved one; and finding love unexpectedly after assuming it was no longer in the cards.

Over the past eight years Ive been astonished and delighted by the stories that spin out of our booths and land on my desk each week. They speak to the enduring and redemptive power of love. They make my spirit soar. In a culture that often feels consumed by all thats phony or famous, these stories give me hope and remind me to try to live life without regrets. I hope they do the same for you.

A ll There Is is dedicated to Lillie Love, our beloved Atlanta-based facilitator who died unexpectedly in 2010. The wisdom and goodness contained in the pages of this book are a testament to the life she lived. Lillie Mae Love will never be forgotten.

Dave Isay, September 2011

AUTHORS NOTE

T he following stories were edited from transcripts of StoryCorps interviews that typically run forty minutes. We aimed to distill these interviews without altering the tone or meaning of the original sessions. At times tense and usage were changed, and a word or two were added for clarity. We did not use ellipses to indicate omitted text; in the following pages ellipses indicate speech trailing off or a pause in speech or conversation.

Words and phrases that read well are not always the strongest spoken moments, and the reverse is also the case. As a result, a story may vary slightly from audio to print.

Participants gave permission for their stories to be published in this book, and each story was fact-checked. A few participants requested that their ages not be included, and we honored that request.

Found

GAYLE TERRIS NEWBY, 77, talks with her husband, FRANK NEWBY, 79

Gayle Terris Newby: After I graduated from high school, my parents couldnt afford college, so I went to nurses training school at the general hospital in Indianapolis. One day my patients son told me that he was really crazy about my friend Betty, who was working on the ward with me, and asked if I could get him a date. I said, Ill try. Betty said, Okay, but Im not going on a single date. So he got two guys, and I got another girl, and we went on a triple date.

On the day of the date Id spent all afternoon on the roof sunbathing. I was red as a beet, my hair was a mess, and I really didnt want to go. As we were walking down the stairs I saw the three guys sitting there, and I said to my friend, Look at the hick with no tie; Ill bet I get stuck with him. And I did.