Last night, at the meeting of the South Central KY Historical and Genealogical Society meeting, I spoke on the topic of "It's All About You." Several on the list have asked if I could share the program with the lists and I've decided to do it. Now - it won't be exactly the same as last night's presentation. I seldom work with notes and I toss in some extra things that won't be shown here. But this is the essence of what I spoke about and hope it inspires you to do what I suggested to the members and guests last night. IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU! I want to start by telling you a story. Many years ago, my husband and I went to Chicago to visit my husband’s great Aunt Veta. She was then quite elderly and the unofficial head of the family; she died at age 102/ She wanted to see our new baby. She for many years, a widow, had a dear friend her age who shared their home; a Miss Marx. She was a delightful woman and, being new in genealogy, I turned the conversation that direction. Miss Marx picked up a large stack of papers and tossed them into the fireplace. She sat down with tears in her eyes and said “that was my family history, my family tree. I am the last of the family. I have no one who cares about the family, no children, no living brothers or sisters and no one would be interested in the Marx family.” I about bawled. Though she was no kin, it was still heart breaking that all of her history was going up in smoke. In the 1880s and 1890s, a man named Perrin and others realized the significance of recording people’s biographies – and a way to make money! He with his assistant editors traveled over most of Kentucky and into other nearby states. Advertising, I assume, he urged people to be recorded in history by having a biography published about themselves. There was, of course, a charge. The more money the individual would be willing to pay, the larger the biography. The problem was … the editors did not check out the information. Whatever they were told, they printed, likely with a grammatical improvement here or there. As genealogists, we are always on the look-out for a biography on one of our ancestors! In the whole, these biographies were accurate. But, given the opportunity to “tell the world” about oneself, there were errors. These could be caused by a faulty memory, inaccurate records and a desire to make oneself more important than he was! A plain house or cabin could turn into a “mansion place”; the land full of weeds could be referred to as “one of the best improved land in the area”, and the individual’s accomplishment in life over-blown. But, we can take that biography and check it against other records and get a good idea of the individual. Parents, grandparents and often farther back, were normally shown; the wife’s lineage, military involvement, children’s names, their spouse, etc. So, tonight, I’d like to talk to you for a time about you. YOU have a story. That story needs to be preserved and it will be much more accurate than the biographies of the past. More than just lineages, which can be included of course, we are looking at just YOU. Now not many of us will ever be famous. We are just people. Farmers, secretaries, mothers, fathers, clerks, blue collar workers, white collar workers. We have not found the cure for cancer or figured out how to bring peace to the world. Millions of people will never hear of us; we’ll never be written up in the Who’s Who of the world. We live, we work, we die. But, people will know more than what is usually shown in our family trees - we were born, we married, we died - and in between times we begat! But, all of us have lived lives filled with happiness, grief, accomplishment. Many of us have lived before their was television, IPods, computers, jet plane travel, microwave ovens, space travel, air conditioning, supermarkets, 3D movies and so much more. We have lived through World War II, the Korean Conflict, Vietnam, Desert Storm and the current battles in Iraq and Afghanistan. You need to write down YOUR story. If you are married, do this for your children or grandchildren. If you are single or widowed, do it for other family members. But, most of all, DO IT FOR YOURSELF! What is history anyway? We speak of the South Central KY HISTORICAL and Genealogical Society. History is one minute ago. History for each of us began the day we were born; it is not reserved for the rich and the famous. We are making history every day of our lives. Our very existence changed the world. When God gave us our very first breath, we became an influence on history in our part of the world. I was thinking the other day about my history. Loving both history and genealogy, many years ago my aunt Jean (who taught me genealogy in one phone call) and I wanted to record my grandfather’s history. He died in his 90’s and kept saying he never did anything important. But Jean left him with a tape recorder and taught him how to use it. A few weeks later, Jean stopped by to see my grandfather and he had filled an entire tape. I still cry when I hear it – he told of my mother almost dying at birth and having to sell his best cow to buy her a special formula. He told of working in the coal mines of southern Illinois and sang some of the old mining songs. He talked of my beloved grandmother who died when I was nine years old and their early years of marriage crop sharing. This gave me an idea. While my mother was still able to see and write well, I asked her to write down her memories, her oral history. She didn’t protest as much and hand wrote about 20 pages of her life and my father’s – their early marriage, coming out of the Great Depression, the struggling years, the loss of my baby brother before I was born. Then my father. He didn’t want to share that much but told of the tornado that hit the one-room school house he attended, killing his best friend. He told of his mother getting TB and of neighbors kicking in and raising him and his five sisters. He told of the death of his father when he was a young boy in a freak accident in a corn silo. That left me. I have kept a diary since my oldest daughter was born in 1974. But my memories go back to my age 3. I typed up about 50 pages of my life, my accomplishments, my failures. There are copies of this on cd for both of my girls. Someday they will laugh and cry at the things I have done, my disappointments, my goals. They share my blood and my DNA and they care. So – let’s go to YOU. Have you written down your own story? It might be a continual thing as one memory will lead to another. You will likely find yourself adding to it as you go along. Many memories fade as we age and we need to capture now before even more fade. To be continued next week. Sandi Sandi's Puzzlers: http://www.gensoup.org/gorinpuzzles/index.php Sandi's site: http://ggpublishing.tripod.com/