This Oral History Symposium held on October 15, 2007 was a spectacular opportunity to share expertise and stories.

We came to this exciting event to hear about oral history projects on national and local levels and, more importantly, to hear from oral historians, faculty and students why it is important for us to share our stories with them. We learned some of the whys and wherefores of the collection and use of oral history and how Willow Valley residents can contribute to this important work. The stories of our lifetimes are worth telling, and together they are history.

All of us have stories to tell about what it was like to grow up in “the old days,” what our hometowns and schools were like, what we ate, the chores we did, the games we played, where we hung out as teenagers, “courting” rituals, and all those big and small events that shaped our youth. What do we remember of what was happening in the world as we were growing up and how did that effect our lives?

Then, what was it like to leave home for the first time, whether it was to go to school, to get married, to get a job, to join the military, or just to get that first apartment on your own? Whether you were a stay-at-home wife and mother, a small cog in a big wheel, or the big wheel yourself; your story is important as one of many that together tell our story as a nation and a people. The everyday happenings of our lives reveal the social history of our society within the larger context of national and international events.

Oral history provides the opportunity to develop “conversations across generations.” Sharing your life stories with students and scholars of today and tomorrow is important for their understanding of what life was like in our day, and they have no way of knowing if we don’t tell them.

Among the presenters for Once Upon A Lifetime were:

Bill Dorman, Professor & Chair, Communication and Theater Depaartment, Millersville University

Jane Hannigan, Willow Valley resident

May Hirata, Willow Valley Resident

Paul Irion, Willow Valley Resident

Bob McDaniel, Willow Valley Resident

Marilyn Parrish, Assistant Professor & University Archivist, Millersville University

Barry Rauhauser, Stauffer Curator, Lancaster County Historical Society

Jack Reardon, Willow Valley Resident

Tom Ryan, Executive Director, Lancaster County Historical Society

Barbara Keener Shenk, Narrator for Millersville Project

Linda Shopes, Oral Historian, Public History Consultant

Latiaynna Tabb, Millersville University Student

Tracey Weis, Professor of History & Director, Women’s Study Program, Millersville University

Tom Whary, Willow Valley resident

History of Oral History

Linda Shopes writes: "Historians generally consider oral history as beginning with the work of Allan Nevins at Columbia University in the 1940s. Nevins was the first to initiate a systematic and disciplined effort to record on tape, preserve, and make available for future research recollections deemed of historical significance. While working on a biography of President Grover Cleveland, he found that Cleveland's associates left few of the kinds of personal records--letters, diaries, memoirs--that biographers generally rely upon. Moreover, the bureaucratization of public affairs was tending to standardize the paper trail, and the telephone was replacing personal correspondence. Nevins came up then with the idea of conducting interviews with participants in recent history to supplement the written record. He conducted his first interview in 1948 with New York civic leader George McAneny, and both the Columbia Oral History Research Office--the largest archival collection of oral history interviews in the world--and the contemporary oral history movement were born." Please visit her website Making Sense of Oral History.