BRINGING LIFE TO THE PAST A WORKSHOP ON ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWING

“Loving the stories; people from the past seemed like old friends.”

GILBOA —-Studs Terkel, one of America’s great historians and interviewers, recorded hundreds of people across the United States for his book on the Great Depression of the 1930s. Without him, the history of U.S. employment problems, the crash of 1929, organized labor issues, “farm holidays” where crops were destroyed, and President Franklin Delanor Roosevelt’s New Deal programs might be distant memories.

Following in Terkel’s footsteps, Deb Hill and Kim Young of Conesville will offer an engaging workshop, “Oral History Interviewing: Bringing Life to the Past” at the Gilboa Museum, Schoharie County on Saturday, September 27 at 1 pm. This workshop will be introduced by Kevin Berner, President of the Jefferson Historical Society and is offered at no charge with reservations requested (Conesvillehistoricalsociety@gmail.com); walk-ins welcome.

With the co-sponsorship of the historical societies of Middletown and Jefferson, Deb and Kim will discuss the best practices of the Oral History Association and the Smithsonian Institution’s Oral History Project. And they will describe how to interview your family or town’s residents for their valuable perspectives – for today and years to come.

“Gathering reflections and life stories from our neighbors can be interesting and rewarding, especially what we learn about our town and family history,” said Deb Hill, a member of the Oral History Association, Conesville resident, and member of the Conesville Historical Society. Her decades-long professional career as a Registered Nurse and clinical Research Nurse in Vascular Surgery trained her in interviewing and storing data according to protocol. She helped develop the oral history project for Conesville and conducts workshops like this one for individuals and other historical societies interested in developing their own programs.

Assisted by team members Mary Rouleau and Carrie Sutton, Deb and Kim will discuss the practice of good interviewing techniques to gather primary source information about a topic from a knowledgeable person and creating a recorded spoken interview. 

“We hope to expose workshop-goers to the process used to conduct oral histories and the reasons why we approach our process in a particular way,” said Conesville Historian Kim Young, “We’ll share best practices we’ve learned through research, participation and membership in professional oral history organizations. We will also hope to share some outcomes of the Conesville oral history project with the group as well.” With family roots going back to the 18th century, Kim has been teaching Social Studies for 17 years in several schools including Cairo-Durham and currently Windham-Ashland-Jewett Central School. And, in addition to Town Historian, she is a founding member and President of the Conesville Historical Society.

“Building a team for the project has been wildly successful,” said Deb Hill. 

“We‘ve completed 10 interviews, edited the raw footage, and presented a program in Conesville to share videos showcasing each of the 10 video interviews. The program has been met with enthusiasm from the community, and several people suggested other people that they would like to see interviewed or be interviewed themselves.”

Mary Roleau and Carrie Sutton are good examples of the team that the Conesville Oral History Project has been building. Mary has always been interested in history and stories. She is a Conesville long-term resident where she built a home, raised children, and taught elementary school in Roxbury. Carrie Sutton is a Conesville native and Navy veteran. With her grandmother living with the family, Carrie heard all the stories of the town, people, stores and houses. Loving the stories, people from the past seemed like old friends.

What’s the workshop’s end-goal?

“We want to get people more interested in being part of the larger oral history collecting tradition,” said Kim Young. We love to see people get involved with the formal process, not just in our organization, but in others as well. There are so many different ways to become involved from setting up the interviews to conducting them, from recording to editing, oral history work like ours works best when there is a team involved. However, you can do something like this with one or two people. 

“Encouraging people to have conversations across generations and backgrounds is one of our main goals," said Kim Young. So if people go back home and just begin to collect oral histories within the context of their own family or own neighborhood after this workshop, we will have accomplished something significant.”

The program will be held at the Gilboa Museum and Nicholas J. Juried History Center, 122 Stryker Rd., Gilboa, NY 12076; 607-588-6894. 

Programs at the Gilboa Museum & Nicholas J. Juried History Center are supported by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, Nicholas J. Juried Foundation, Schoharie Arts Council, Joyce and David Barber Fund, and the Town of Gilboa.