StoryCorps

• StoryCorps, an independent nonprofit organization that travels around the nation in a silver trailer, stopped in Brookside from Sept. 7 through this past Sunday.
• StoryCorps’ goal is to involve a diverse group of people sharing a piece of their life in one, hour-long session.
• “The premis of StoryCorps is to put the [interview] process in the participant’s hands, and let them ask the questions,” StoryCorps’ mobile facilitator Lizz Straight said.
• They provide everyday people the oppurtunity to record their stories and pass them on to their posterity. Afterward, they archive every story in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, making it ‘one of the largest oral history projects of its kind,’ according to storycorps.org.
• Every Friday morning, NPR airs a StoryCorps narrative on their “Morning Edition” program. They also post the audio of some stories on NPR’s website along with a photograph of the speakers.
• In the past six years, they have collected stories from 60,000 participants and eventually hope to touch every American family.

‘They’re not going to throw you out with a stick,’ Kayla, my consoling coworker, said to calm my pre-interview nerves Sept. 18.

As I prepare for a quick interview with a StoryCorps employee, I nervously anticipate that slight awkwardness of meeting a stranger. Breathing deeply, I leave work on break and walk down 63 St. I glance toward the bold, red letters spelling StoryCorps along the side of a silver air-stream trailer sitting in the parking lot adjacent to the Brookside tennis courts.

As I stand there underneath the volunteer’s tent outside in my denim Dime Store apron and name tag, a woman emerges from the trailer and greets me.

I introduce myself and ask for just 10 minutes of her time for an interview. Then, fortune strikes me.

She, Ms. Lizz Straight, StoryCorp’s mobile facilitator, tells me their 10:30 a.m. appointment did not show up. She asked me if I would want to fill in for the now empty session. Eagerly, I agree.

I step into the trailer and am surprised to discover it’s cozy, dark environment. Other trailers I have been in have not been like this, I think to myself.

We sit facing each other in the back, with black microphones hovering above our faces. As I proceed with my interview, I realize how lucky I am to grab this forgotten session.

“As soon as we opened up our calendar, [all the appointments] filled up in 18 minutes for the first round,” Straight told me. “The second round filled up in eight minutes, so we’ve had a really high demand for appointment slots in Kansas City.”

The day after I had my StoryCorps experience, junior Erin Hutchison participated in it for her second time.

In her first session with StoryCorps, she traveled to their New York permanent booth with her mom when she was 13. Her mom asked her about her impression of New York and her life at the time. When they began talking about her sister, Sienna, Erin admits she cried a little.

Now three years later, Erin said she felt ‘nervous that [she] was going to cry again.’

This time around, she and Sienna, 12 years old, planned to do StoryCorps together.

‘We thought it would be a good bonding experience and a way to preserve our memories,’ Erin explained.

They spoke about their relationship as sisters, and this time, Erin asked the questions.

‘It was a good way for my sister and I to talk about everything we don’t normally get a chance to talk about,’ Erin mentioned.

The idea behind StoryCorps involves exactly that. They provide the place for relatives or friends to share with each other and the rest of the world a glimmer of their personal lives.

Quite fittingly, the glimmer I shared in my interview with StoryCorps reflects a personal passion: journalism.

Because of StoryCorps, I know now what I want to do with my life. If StoryCorps is still around in twelve years, I want to work for them, listening to people’s lives told in one hour and giving certain 16-year-old aspiring journalists an experience to remember.