Reflection on the Power of Stories

In Spring 2022 I had the opportunity to record the oral history of a woman who worked at the library at California State University Monterey Bay from the opening of the university to just a few years prior to our interview. As the culminating assignment for the Oral History class, I shared about four hours with April. In that time, we journeyed through decades of her life from her boyhood in Portland, Oregon to her work as a not-a-“librarian” librarian at CSUMB to her emergence as an absolutely vibrant and delightful woman in her late fifties. She shared the photos she took as Fort Ord transitioned from an active military base to a public university, and together we pondered the parallels between that and her own transition. I witnessed a kaleidoscope of emotions cross her face as she guided me through a lifetime of joys and sorrows, triumphs and regrets. If you have ever had the chance to perform this service, you may know that it is nearly impossible to explain the feeling of privilege that this work fosters. For me, the experience was magnified by the class presentation where I performed an edited monologue from her history for the class and invited guests, including April. We were both in tears of gratitude and joy by the end of it. 

I was reminded of this experience last week when I read Carrie’s Innovation Strategy and Roadmap for her Memory Café. I have seen the power that memory has to uplift. In this time of increasing divergence between generations, not to mention the unprecedented breadth of generations existing at once, I think that programs like this are more important than ever. I would only add that in addition to helping to draw long lost memories back into the light, generations to come will benefit from the preservation of those memories.