HHH Members Participate in StoryCorp

Three HHH pairs have participated in StoryCorp, a national non-profit committed to capturing ordinary people with extraordinary stories. Carolyn Wright, a Cherokee Indian who now finds herself homeless, was interviewed by UMC Director of Services Ashley Milano Barnett. Mother Betty, a preacher, activist, and HHH member was interviewed by her right-hand woman Sister Diann. And, Dawoud Assad was interviewed by Angie Forde. Angie and Dawoud's interview was featured by the Charlotte Observer. Read their story below:


In sound booth, lives become legacies
ELIZABETH LELAND
eleland@charlotteobserver.com

GARY O'BRIEN - gobrien@charlotteobserver.com
The first full day of a month-long stay in Charlotte found Leslie Williams, 50, her father George Linker, 78, and their list of questions in the StoryCorps MobileBooth, parked outside the Mecklenburg County Library Main Branch in uptown Charlotte.

LISTEN TO A STORY StoryCorps will be in Charlotte through March 1. No more Charlotte appointments are available, but anyone interested is invited to call in case of cancellations: 800-850-4406. Local excerpts from StoryCorps air on WFAE 90.7 FM at 6:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. on Thursdays, beginning Feb. 14. Stories previously aired on NPR are archived: www.storycorps.net/listen/



Let me tell you a story about stories.
Angie Forde asked Dawoud Assad to describe the saddest day of his life. He told her about the time he visited his mother in a nursing home and she didn't recognize him.
Though Forde had never heard Assad's story before, she knew his story. It was her story, too. Her father, who had Alzheimer's, often mistook her for someone else.
Telling stories is how we connect -- as family, as friends, as a city of 695,995 people and, on a global level, as a civilization. How could we make sense of our lives today, if somebody hadn't passed along stories of what went before?
That is why a silver Airstream trailer is parked at the library at North Tryon and Sixth streets. Inside, people like Dawoud Assad are telling stories. They are part of NPR's national StoryCorps project, which will record 10,000 stories to be archived at the Library of Congress.
The stories aren't epics like the Bible or "Beowulf" or Homer's "Odyssey." Most aren't about well-known people or historic events, and that's what makes them important.
"They are taking the pulse of the nation," says Bill Ferris, a folklorist and co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. "These are stories from the heart."
Ferris told me the story of going to visit Civil War historian Shelby Foote. The two friends talked about history. Ferris recalled Foote saying: History is not about facts. It's about telling a story. The next day, Foote died.
Too often, Ferris said, our stories die with us.
An ancient art
Jesus, Confucius, Moses, Muhammad and Buddha are among the great storytellers. Also Lincoln and Sigmund Freud and the girls of Salem, Mass.Newsman Charles Kuralt was a modern-era storyteller.
So is Charlotte Glassman. Listen to the love story she told in the recording booth:
She was visiting Charlotte in 1980, and her sister and sister-in-law decided to take her out one night. She wore a yellow sundress and white high heel sandals. They went to a country music bar, where most everyone wore blue jeans and boots. She felt so out of place, she decided to have a little fun.
"Dan came up and asked me to dance and I said, Well, yeah, but here's my list of requirements: You've got to have a motorcycle and a boat and a horse.
"And Dan pulls out his wallet and flips it open and he says, `Here's my two motorcycles, my two boats and I can buy a horse.' "
They've been together ever since.
Memorable moments
Stories big and small, of love and broken hearts, triumph and struggle, help us make sense of the world. We tell them because we have to.
"If you think about how we think and how we process information, it's always in story form," says storyteller Brian Sturm, a professor at UNC Chapel Hill. "What did you do today? What did you learn in class?"
Or, as Courtney James asked his mother Thursday in the recording booth:
"How would you like to be remembered?"
Sybil Lassiter, who is 79, told her son about growing up in Harlem, raising three children and getting a master's and Ph.D. even though her husbands didn't appreciate her drive to get an education.
"I'd just like to be remembered," she said, "as an independent person, an honest person, someone that loved her family and someone that loved an education."
Telling stories is a way of making sure we aren't forgotten.
Unexpected characters
Now let me tell you why Angie Forde interviewed Dawoud Assad for the StoryCorps project.After Forde moved to Charlotte from Barbados to be with her elderly mother, she began volunteering at the Urban Ministry Center. She met Assad there, and he didn't fit the stereotype of a homeless person. He is 62, neatly dressed, articulate and well traveled.
What, Forde wondered, was his story?
In the recording booth, she asked him. He told her about being baptized in childhood as an Episcopalian, becoming a Muslim as an adult, traveling the world as an electrician on oil rigs, then losing his home through foreclosure.
If a man like Assad could wind up homeless, Forde realized, any of us could.
His story could be our story, too.
Why we tell stories
"Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting, and doing the things historians usually record; while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry, and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river."
-- Will Durant, historian
When an old man or woman dies, a library burns to the ground.
-- African proverb
"Storytelling is the glue that keeps civilization together."
-- Christopher "Chip" Scanlan, who teaches writing at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla.