. . . a selection from some newspaper articles

Almost every family has photo albums or boxes overflowing with snapshots and the memories they contain. Not every family knows exactly what the aged photos represent—or the sentimental value they may hold. If you were hip in the 1950s and ’60s, you documented beach trips and picnics on a Super8 movie camera. In the ’70s through the present, it’s digital and video cameras that capture moments with ever-increasing price tags and sophistication. Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and confirmations are all destined for family archives and usually, professionals are called in to document them.
Uncle Hank’s trick knee and well-worn war stories always fascinated the whole family, but who can remember the details? What did Grandmother do before she was married and how did she meet Grandpa, anyway? Why is our last name spelled strangely?
These are some questions that are unanswerable, even by using increasingly popular family tree research available in libraries and on the Internet. Unless family history is documented before a relative passes away, the stories inevitably vanish with them.
Writer Donna Gold is trying to revive the age-old tradition of oral history in families with her new business, Personal History.
“Stories are as precious as photographs, as valuable as heirloom silver,” Gold says. “We wouldn’t think of not hiring a wedding photographer, or of forgetting the camera at our children’s birthday parties, but stories told around the kitchen table—tales of immigration, of the war years, of romance, births, or the simple details of daily lives, we don’t tend to preserve.
The stories of people older than us, our parents and grandparents have tremendous meaning to younger generations, Gold explains. However, the ability to remember—the recording of these stories—have been lost since the beginning of last century. According to Gold, her kind of family documentation is something new, adding that a century ago, people used to communicate more by letter-writing. People would save the letters and then they would be preserved as historical documents.
. . .One of her clients were siblings who wanted to give their mother a book about their memories of her for her 80th birthday Although Gold wasn’t there to see her reaction to the present, she heard that the first day the mother received the book, she had already read the handmade tome six times.
“I love hand-bnding books and I love to give people beautiful-looking books that they will treasure—books that they want to hold and open and look through,” Gold says.
“People learn things they didn’t know about their relatives after reading these books, but they also remember things that they had forgotten.”

STOCKTON SPRINGS — Donna Gold is making it her business to get to know people, learn about their lives and hear their stories.
That business, Personal History, combines two of Gold’s passions —oral history and book making. From person-to-person interviews, Gold creates bound volumes of family history.
Oral histories traditionally have been passed down from generation to generation in close-knit families that often lived together under one roof. But, with the modern tendency of families to break into largely autonomous groups, this oral heritage is being lost forever, said Gold
Gold is seeking to change this.
“We wouldn’t think twice about hiring a wedding photographer to document an important family moment,” she said. “But the stories and remembrances that make up a family’s identity and character are not being preserved. I think we need that understanding of where we’ve come from.”
Gold uses a tape recorder and laptop computer during her interviews and later transcribes the information in a process that can take over a month from start to finish.
Gold’s background as a freelance writer and as an author of the Boston Globe’s “Voices” column has given her the qualifications needed for her new endeavor.
“It’s important that the person interviewed be allowed to tell their story in their own way,” explained Gold, who tries to capture that way of telling with as little editing as possible.
“I try to put it in chronological order and edit it to flow smoothly,” Gold said.
Using a laser printer and acid-free paper, and binding the pages with linen thread, Gold creates archival finished products as singular as the lives they related.
“Everyone’s story is unique,” said Gold. “You don’t necessarily have to have led a remarkable life.”
If needed, she can incorporate photographs into the finished product. If multiple copies are desired, Gold can order small press runs from a book printer.
“Young people often say they wouldn’t want to live in their grandparents’ time, before computers and video,” said Gold. “But the grandparents may view that era as the most wonderful years of their lives. There’s a huge difference in lives just two generations removed.”  

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