Thanksgiving a time to share stories

Every Thanksgiving, Grandfather gets up from the table and spends the afternoon at the piano, singing folk songs from the old country.

Did you ever wonder what memories the music unlocks?

Did you ever ask him?

The days surrounding Thanksgiving, when many a far-flung family draws near, are an opportune time to turn on a recording device and invite relatives to share stories from their lives.

That's the annual reminder from StoryCorps, a national oral history project that since 2008 has designated the day after Thanksgiving as a "National Day of Listening."

"We're asking everyone to take an hour out of their day to record a conversation with a loved one," said Krisi Packer, spokeswoman for StoryCorps.

With funding from the federal government and donors, the Brooklyn-based Corps has recorded oral histories of 60,000 ordinary Americans, most of which are on file at the Library of Congress.

"You can learn a lot about somebody in less than an hour," said Packer. "It's the least expensive and most meaningful gift you can give."

Guided by prepared questions, these conversations can visit that person's proudest achievements, childhood games, war stories, great joys, and deep sorrows, and take revelatory turns down roads unknown to the interviewer.

"Most people are so grateful to be listened to," said Barbara Dundon, executive director of Need in Deed, a Chestnut Hill-based nonprofit that is StoryCorps' local sponsor for the National Day of Listening.

Founded in 1987, Need in Deed works in 35 elementary schools in Philadelphia to coordinate their service-learning programs, some of which have included oral histories.

In a project five years ago at Grover Washington Middle School in Olney, recordings were made of eighth graders talking of the grief they felt when urban teenagers were killed by gunfire.

"StoryCorps came in and helped us prepare the questions," Dundon recalled. "Some of the kids wanted to know, 'What should I do if somebody starts crying?' "

In 2007, Dundon learned firsthand the emotional power of oral history.

She and her husband sat down in a StoryCorps' recording booth in New York to reminisce about her mother, who had died six months before at 90.

"I can only describe it as a sacred experience," said Dundon. "We sat in their soundproof room, at a square table with two chairs and microphones, with a sound engineer off to the side. It was like being in this cocoon. We spent 45 minutes just talking about my mother, and it felt like we'd transcended this world. It was very moving. We both cried."

They got a free CD of the conversation, and StoryCorps put a copy into a permanent archive at the Library of Congress, as it does with virtually all such recordings. An excerpt also aired on NPR's Morning Edition, and even made it into a book, Mom: A Celebration of Mothers From StoryCorps.

"It's not necessary to record to have a meaningful conversation," Dundon said, but taping "makes it permanent and available to the larger family or community. And in nearly every case, people reveal things the other person didn't know."

Among the advice StoryCorps gives to aspiring oral historians: Learn to use and test your recording equipment in advance. Record the date and names of the participants. Prepare questions, but stay flexible if the topic changes. Keep the conversation to about 45 minutes, but before concluding ask the subjects if there is something they wish to share.

An instruction guide to setting up and recording an oral history interview is available online at www.nationaldayoflistening.org, an offshoot of StoryCorps' own website at http://storycorps.org.

Need in Deed is in discussions with a fifth-grade class at Day Elementary School in West Oak Lane about a service-learning project on cancer.

On Monday, a recording was made of a 45-minute conversation between student Jordan Grayes, whose mother has been battling cancer for five years, and Cindy Kerr of Wayne, whose son, Ryan, developed bone cancer at 12 and died five years later, in 2008.

Kerr, president of ConKerr Cancer, a nonprofit support group for hospitalized children, had met Jordan several weeks before when she spoke at his school.

In the recording, the 10-year-old asked her, "What have you learned from that experience" of caring for a child with cancer?

Kerr spoke of Ryan's courage and good humor and how he "learned to appreciate . . . the little things other people take for granted."

In reply to her questions, Jordan spoke of his mother's strength and resourcefulness. "If she was stranded in the desert for five months, and it took them five months to find her," he said, "she would figure out how to survive."

Later, he said he never leaves home in the morning without "telling my mom I love her."

An excerpt of their conversation appears on Need in Deed's website at www.needindeed.com