Then I took a pilgrimage to California to visit my grandfather’s youngest sister. Finally, I found a relative who relished talking about her past. Boy, did I hear stories! I taped my aunt’s memories of life in Bessarabia, transcribed the stories, then buried them in a file, because I was busy working as a journalist, writing for the Boston Globe, Smithsonian Magazine, Natural History and other outlets.

After my son was born, I rediscovered my aunt’s story. When I reread them, I realized that these stories were some of the most precious I’d ever typed. My aunt’s wonder at seeing a home with a real floor, her stories of life on a Russian commune, her descriptions of pogroms, gave me a heritage of courage, humor and spunk I hadn’t even known I had.

To honor these stories, I learned how to bind books by hand, for I saw how pages stuck in a file just don’t command the attention a real book does.

I now dedicate myself to helping others record and preserve their stories, whether it be as a 200-page memoir or a two-page legacy letter. From my extensive journalism work and my master’s degree in anthropology, I have become an experienced interviewer, collecting oral histories for the Smithsonian Institution’s Nanette Laitman Archives of American Art while also working with families, communities, retirement homes and estate planners to help people record their stories. See articles about Personal History.