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Family Ties —
Baby boomers may feel sense of urgency to preserve the past.
By Chrystle Fiedler
 When Thrivent Financial
for Lutherans member Paul Sease, 50, of Gilbert, South Carolina, would go to
visit his 91-year-old father before he died in October 2004, he'd bring a notebook
along. During their visits, Sease says, "We'd get around to discussing
the older days and his childhood. I'd jot down the conversations." Sease
gradually began to create a family history. "He had a good memory until
the end. I realized I needed to preserve as much as I could."
For baby boomers like Sease, there can be a sense of urgency to capture the
memories of aging parents and grandparents while there is still time. Mike Ransom,
a 57-year-old retired technical writer from Rochester, Minnesota, specializes
in creating family memoirs and has seen an increased demand from his clients.
"With families getting scattered," the Thrivent Financial member explains,
"you don't always have reunions to share these stories. A family history
is something to hold on to when someone is gone. It's invaluable."
Getting Started
Sease first became interested in his family's history before his mother passed
away in 2000. "I gave Mom and Dad a family history book. She filled out
several pages and did her lineage as well." He later found the family Bible
with written recordings of the marriages and deaths of family members. "Historically,
in Christian families, the family Bible used to be the storing place for all
the important dates and stories," he says.
The work Sease did with his father led him to update work that had been done
by another member of the Sease family in the 1960s. New technology made it easy,
and to date, his database includes more than 5,400 people. "I traced three
of the four lines in my family to the original ship they came over on from Germany.
They were all Lutherans," he says. "I actually have copies of the
newspaper that reported when the ship arrived in September of 1752." In
his research, which extends back to the 1400s, Sease even found that his family
tree includes Andreas Osiander, a theologian and contemporary of Martin Luther.
Ransom, who considers his projects with clients "sacred work," sets
up a family-events timeline when he begins a project and asks clients to think
about whom they are writing to, what their purpose is in writing, and what they
want to write about. The last question helps them narrow the scope of their
project so they don't get overwhelmed.
"A memoir doesn't have to be about every day of your life. It can be a
slice of your life," Ransom explains. "Think, for example, if you
had one year of your life to live over again, what would it be and why? Write
about that to start." It can also help to set a deadline (Christmas or
the next family reunion, perhaps) to keep you focused on completing your task.
Sease, for example, plans to finish a book on his family by the time he retires.
Untold Benefits
Creating a family history bonded Sease and his father in a whole new way. "The
last couple of years we were closer than we'd ever been," he recollects.
"We shared a lot of stories and time together…it was just amazing.
I'm building something for my kids that they can carry on for their own kids."
Before his father died, the two men went on a field trip of sorts to the site
of his father's boyhood home. "His memory was so clear and crisp,"
Sease recalls. "He told us about his one-room schoolhouse, the log across
the creek that he walked over to see his granddaddy, the mules and the wagons.
He could even tell you the sounds the horses would make as they went across
the bridge. It was like he was going back in time."
Chrystle Fiedler is a previous contributor to Thrivent magazine whose work
also has appeared in Woman's Day and Better Homes & Gardens.
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