Collections and memory

I'm always fascinated to visit the inevitable 'cabinet of curiosities' that older veterans have on display in honor of their time in service.  Some people have lighted cabinets, others have photographs prominently displayed in their front visiting rooms, and yet others have stacks of newspapers and letters filed away. 

As part of the project, I visit with the veteran and always end up exploring this collection through their eyes.  Some collections seem almost sacred, while others might be considered mundane to the untrained observer.  However, items and souvenirs that people keep to express the importance of their experiences explain much about the stories they end up telling later.

My very first interview was a real treat.  The veteran had a stack of newspapers that we explored on video and we went through the emotions that she felt as she viewed photographs and letters she had not considered in a very long time.  She reflected on lifelong friendships as the result of her service and fondly remembered her late husband and resulting career as an army wife.  Even the table we used for the interview had significance for her - she and her husband had acquired it while her husband was on assignment in Germany.  The beautiful and intricate carving was an amazing sight.  More amazing was her portrait in a ballgown made of parachute silk - and she was quite the looker back in the day!  The pictures of her drumming cadence for training soldiers were both striking and progressive considering it was World War II.  She felt her service to be insignificant in comparison to that of the soldiers, but I believe otherwise.

Other collections are much more structured - series of awards, or displays, or books.  Some collections have been turned into novels.  Many pictures are copies of copies, made for visitors and grandchildren alike.  (We all have grubby hands in one way or another.) 

What always breaks my heart a bit is thinking about what will happen to these collections upon the veterans' death.  For many, their children will have to make decisions on what importance certain collections possess. 

One option is to reserve collections for the Veterans History Project, either at the time of interview or to be collected at a later date.  However, the importance of collections, whether physical or intangible, to the interviewee is never to be underestimated.  It is difficult to talk about passing on collections to people who are often reflecting on their experiences anew with the help of the interview.  Those possessions and memories may seem more sacred upon recall. 

I've yet to figure out how to appropriately broach the passing on of collections without seeming like a memory-stealer of sorts - as an aside, this is entirely self-labeling - so I can usually convince a photograph or two to enter the archive but nothing more (though I do leave literature explaining that more can be added at a later date).  Any suggestions, especially without breaching the choice that relatives should make concerning the possessions of their parents instead of a lowly oral historian's coercion?

John Green and the importance of remembering

"And the moral of the story is that you don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened."  -An Abundance of Katherines, John Green

Recently I've started re-listening to many favorites as audiobooks during my commute - most recently one of John Green's first novels, An Abundance of Katherines.  I read this book before I got into oral history as a hobby, and I never realized what importance the concept of memory versus fact-collecting played in the book.

The book's protagonist, Colin Singleton - an utterly unaccomplished wunderkind and Chicago native - finds himself in Gutshot, TN - home to a dying textile mill (and therefore, a quickly dwindling population).  He is tasked, along with his best friend Hassan and the mill owner's daughter, Lindsey, with chronicling the history of current and retired mill employees.  Not until the end of the book (spoiler alert) is it revealed that the reason is that the town and its collective memory may very well soon disappear altogether. 

This revelation causes the almost-adults in the book to start reflecting on their own lives and what they collectively haven't accomplished because of their self-indulgent natures.  Colin's world is shaken when he realizes his own memory, prodigy though he may be, is not as factual as he led himself to believe and that his brain is entirely self-serving.  Ultimately, each character decides to redefine themself:

• by making something of oneself instead of taking the inexcusably lazy road (in Hassan's case);
• by hoping that the world stays the same in order to resist unpleasant growth (in Lindsey's case)
• or in seeking to find meaning in the world outside of that ultimately provable by facts (in Colin's case).

The book's strength lies in explaining the concept of collective memory - especially in dwindling populations.  While facts prove correlation, they are lifeless without an accompanying human story.

Collecting oral histories is not about obtaining recollections of factual events (dates, who won or lost, names, and so on).  It's about documenting the emotions and recollections of experience.

Too late

Working on a project where you interview veterans, it's inevitable that you'll sometimes miss the boat.

One of my first oral history projects involved interviewing a woman, almost 100 years old, who was part of a minority community in Austin.  On the day I was set to interview her, she did not answer her door.  She did not answer her phone.  As frail as she was, I spent the day frantically trying to get in touch with someone who might know what had happened to her/to check on her, to no avail.  Later that night, I received a call from her sister - she had fallen and gone into the hospital, and was quite annoyed that I had raised a stir about her to her immediate community members.  This still bothers me as I would have been devastated if she had been fatally injured and no one had checked on her.

But what happens if you get there too late?  What is the responsibility of the interviewer: to try and strive for the best interview, or to try and be mindful that the older a person the more complications may arise before or during interviews and to respect those boundaries?

I sometimes am amused that Mike has provided me with many brochures about contacting the Red Cross if there are any lasting effects of the war that may be painful to talk about on camera.  As most of my interviews have been with 90+-year-olds, that is the least of their worries.  Most have a 'script' about their stories that they generally follow and while I may trip them up once in a while with my incessant questions, it's not on their minds.  Most experiences happened so long ago that the processing has taken place over a half century.

So, the bigger question is... what if you get there too late, but the person is still alive?  The unfortunate side of interviewing the elderly is that their ability to remember and process information can quickly degenerate with illness and old age.

While many have written their histories down, those histories were written post-retirement when the interviewees had full faculties (often in the 1970s or 80s).  As we're approaching 25-40 years since publishing, the history is not as fresh in their minds and my job involves more than encouraging a jog down memory lane. It often involves referencing facts and dates which often become more difficult to remember, so that they can focus on their emotions and relationships instead.  This means I have to juggle not only interview questions but the prep for interviews can take hours of memorization, obscure book locating, reference materials and pre-interviewing with the veteran and their family members (but that's another post in itself).

I'm writing this blog to help me process the emotional side of interviewing and processing.  I often delay indexing my interviews because I relive frustrations I see in both the interviewee and myself; I kick myself for cutting them off or asking questions that were not helpful.  I have to take a week or so to deconstruct what happened and separate myself from the experience before I feel comfortable approaching it again.

The silent contributor

Have you ever thought about how you hold a conversation with other people - a partner, a friend, your family, or a complete stranger? 

Think about the different ways in which you interact with those people.

• What sort of language do you use?
• Is your body slumped, upright?  Are your legs crossed or open?
• Do you wait for the other person to finish speaking before you begin?

Oral history teaches you to interact in different ways, including mimicking postures, silently encouraging conversation, and most important of all - being quiet.  When I go back and listen to interviews I have performed, the most devastating thing I do is to cut off the contributor before their thought is finished. 

The power of quiet is amazing.  Stories blossom out of silence.  Final thoughts are laid on comments that expand into entirely new conversations.  "Why?" is a powerful question in these instances.

Don't be afraid of quiet, but do be aware that quiet can be uncomfortable for some.  Some people never shut up and it may be hard to get a word in edgewise!  Others may unconsciously beg for you to go to your next question, though I try to leave mine unscheduled on purpose.  Most importantly, it is necessary to watch your interviewee and test out a couple of techniques to see which one makes them most comfortable - preferably before the recording goes live.

The best thing you can do in most instances is to delay starting - or even the appearance of starting - your next question until you're certain the contributor is finished with their thought.  Some people respond to physical cues while others need audio cues to know when you are going on to the next topic or question. 

Learn to keep your mouth shut and be genuinely interested in the interview you are receiving.  This requires a certain awareness of oneself and a willingness to shut off that inner monologue so that you can concentrate on the contributor, not yourself.

I once spent two hours in an interview trying to blow my nose as silently as possible.  The cedar had hit in Austin hard last fall, and my sinuses were trying to forcibly extract themselves from my nostrils in protest.  As lovely as it would have been to hear my constant nose-blowing on the archival footage for the project, I instead kept my attention on the interviewee and breathed through my mouth as long as I could stand while maintaining solid eye contact.  That ended up being one of my favorite interviews.

Introduction

As an amateur historian, the study of war and military has never been my best area.  I come from a family without much, if any, military background -though my father does like to tell the story about a relative who crossed over to the Union side once the Confederacy looked to be in a relatively grim state.  (Don't worry, he came back once the War was over.)

A series of events led me to the Veterans History Project:

• I started a job that encourages volunteering, but doesn't fulfill my love of history.
• I started looking for ways to spend my free time more wisely (more on that later).
• The Bastrop wildfires devastated the land near the town in which I live.
• An emergency call went out to employees at my company, asking us to volunteer at a telethon that afternoon to raise money for wildfire evacuees.

Upon entering the training booth for the telethon, sponsored by the American Red Cross of Central Texas, I started up a conversation with Mike Chaison.  Mike happens to run the Texas chapter of the Veterans History Project, though I am certain he wears many hats within the organization.  He was very excited to meet someone that has been trained in oral history interviewing techniques.  Shortly thereafter, I was set up with a Sony Handycam, a set of instructions, and a directive to go forth and prosper, finding as many veterans as I can to interview before it's too late.

What's at stake?  Every day, hundreds if not thousands of veterans die.  Oral history, and chronicling history in general, often becomes more pressing when those affected by the history begin passing away from old age.  Many museum projects and memorials have only small numbers of survivors/veterans.

Where can I find out more about this project?

Check out the official website at http://www.loc.gov/vets .  The American Red Cross of Central Texas provides me and an entire team of volunteers with equipment and document processing/cleanup for acquisition into the Library of Congress project.  Without them I would not have the ability to interview these veterans and I am thankful for their contributions to the project.

So, why write about the experience from your end?

Listening is hard work.  It's harder than holding a conversation, for sure - you have to be the silent contributor behind the camera.  You have to reserve judgment.  It's imperative that you provide a welcome environment for difficult stories to people near the end of their lives.  Maybe this blog will inspire others to talk to their elders about their experiences, not only within war but also those stories that changed their lives - for better or worse.