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Jim Bradshaw: Take the chance to capture your best memories while you can

My recent column about Dr. Murphy Martin and the Ghost Army prompted his daughter, Leslie Formeller, to send me a transcript of a long, taped interview she did with him in the 1990s as part of an oral history project in St. Martinville.
It reminded me that it is time to remind you of what a treat it can be to sit down and capture the reminiscences of the gray-haired folks in your family, and how valuable their stories can be in preserving not only your family’s history, but descriptions of the life and people of their community that would otherwise never be recorded.
I intuitively picked up on that idea as a child, when I was fascinated by the stories told by my grandfather Gallaugher. He was a good storyteller, and they were true stories — at least true to his memory — about our family and about the times, places, and circumstances that created our history.
As he began to age, I realized that he was the sole depository of a wealth of information about those dry names in our genealogical chart, and that all of that — and a wealth of other information about the events of his long lifetime — would be lost with his death.
That’s why I first got out the tape recorder and interviewed him for several hours. It was one of the most satisfying, and sometimes surprising, things that I have done, and led me to sit down with my grandmother and mother and aunts and uncles to capture bits of their lives and memories on tape.
Some of their stories were funny, some of them not so. You could feel the fear and worry in my grandmother’s recollections of the days during World War II when her boys were in faraway and dangerous places. They came home unhurt, but that didn’t change the worry while they were gone. My grandfather had his own recollections of World War I.
Sometimes I got insights that I would have never had without these interviews. For example, I was very young when my grandfather Bradshaw died and I have no real recollection of him. I knew that he came to Louisiana from England as a young man, met and married a Cajun girl, and ran the family farm near Vinton in Calcasieu Parish.
I’d assumed that he spoke with that same Texas twang as most of the people of the Calcasieu prairies, so it surprised me when my aunt told me, “You know, I think lots of people thought Poppa was better educated than he was, just because he had that British accent.”
Of course, he had a British accent! He was a grown man when he came to the United States. But I’d never thought of it, and that changed my idea of the man I knew almost solely from a photo of a fellow with a handlebar mustache.
Those tapes were destroyed in a house fire some years ago, but I still remember most of the stories and am still influenced by them.
Since then, I have had the opportunity to do extended interviews with some of the leaders of Acadiana and, even more gratifying, to help gather oral histories from the fading generation of World War II veterans, many of whom told their amazing stories for the first time.
There’s nothing scary about doing it. Start at the beginning: When were you born? Who were your parents? What did they do? Where did you grow up? What was it like there? Where did you go to school? How did you choose your line of work?
Give them time to think before they answer. Don’t be uncomfortable if there is a pause while they collect their thoughts about long-ago events, work to recapture half-forgotten events and people, perhaps become emotional over some of them. Pause with them, let them think.
Don’t worry about the conversation running dry. One thing will lead to another, and your curiosity and their stories will give you plenty to talk about.
Do it this year, nobody’s getting younger. Make it your resolution that this year you are going to sit down and talk with your parents and grandparents, to listen to their stories, ask them questions. You’ll find out not only more about who they are, but more about who you are.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, Cajuns and Other Characters, is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.

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