One of the
things I’ve been doing over the past year, when not writing a mystery novel, is a family history, which
is now getting close to publication. The family in question died out a decade
ago, but left behind a charitable foundation that gives millions of dollars a
year to local nonprofits.
It was the
administrator of that foundation who decided a family history would be a good
idea and brought me in to do it. He sensed, correctly, that time was running
out to talk to people who still remember the family members, and that the story
might be lost if it wasn’t captured now.
Running
down that story (or as much of it as possible) has been one of the most
interesting and challenging things I’ve ever done. I find myself in the
position of trying to bring to life, for a modern reader, a group of people
I’ve never met, and of making their story interesting. The latter isn’t too
hard because they accomplished quite a bit; for instance, one of the daughters
was the first female district attorney in California when appointed to that position
in 1947.
Chasing Ghosts
The
finished product resembles an unfinished jigsaw puzzle that conveys a definite
image, yet one with a number of pieces missing. Some of the people I wanted to
interview turned me down. Some that I did talk to died after talking with me
(I’m not implying a connection here), and at times I’ve felt as if I’m chasing
ghosts, one step ahead of the undertaker.
One of the
things that made the task difficult is that the family in question wrote down
almost nothing. If they kept diaries or journals, none has survived.
Correspondence is similarly sparse. The two daughters wrote letters to each
other regularly when they were off to college, but the collection the
Foundation has is surely only partial. With the exception of the daughter who
was district attorney (and even she, not so much) they weren’t often in the
newspapers.
One of the
daughters did do an oral history interview with the University of California in
1977, and that was helpful, if far from complete. By and large, putting
together this story has been like building a beach one grain of sand at a time.
A Date Would Have Meant So Much
There are
several photo albums, one of which has handwritten captions. But on a couple of
the really critical photos, there is no date and the caption information is
sparse at best. One, for instance, shows a row of people standing stiffly in
front of the family packing house. The caption reads: “Ma with Chinese visitors
from Honolulu.”
Based on my
research, I can hazard a highly educated guess as to who the visitors were, but
it’s still only a guess. Without their names, I can’t be certain. And if the
visitors are who I think they are, the date of the photo would have been hugely
important, but it’s not in the caption nor in the processing stamp on the back
of the print.
Experiences
like that have led me to some philosophizing. Most of us go through our lives
thinking we’re the most important person in the universe, but we don’t act like
it in other respects. If we were really that important, we’d figure that people
in years to come would be looking at our stuff and needing information. I’ve
come to believe that everyone who has family artifacts, should pull them
together and catalog them as best possible. You never know who might need the
information 75 years from now.
