When he left his “time capsule,” their Uncle Curt didn’t know there were people yet unborn who would one day think about him because he’d done it. He didn’t know they would be so excited and so grateful. He didn’t have any idea how much the clues he left behind would help them.
My father died way before we were all walking around with cameras capable of recording video and audio in our pockets (or our hands).
It all happened because one of these first cousins, separated by the Holocaust when they were young boys, wrote a memoir that the other one happened to see. What a dramatic story illustrating the power of writing down your family history!
Why we take the time and make the effort to record people’s stories, their personal histories.
Have you dreamed about recording a parent’s story? Or about writing your family’s history, and the path it took over the decades—now, while your grandparents can still tell you what they know? How about documenting the history of a company you built up from nothing, or recording the life of a long-beloved family home? This is where a personal historian comes in.
Hoppes perfectly captures why creating personal history projects (on paper, video or other) is important.
