It’s been two years of COVID. Thank goodness for online databases for genealogy, as many libraries and history centers are closed or have drastically reduced hours.

While I haven’t been blogging, I have been doing genealogy research, listening to podcasts (Extreme Genes and Genealogy Gems are two I’ve gained tips and pointers from), and interviewed my dad over Thanksgiving.

The idea came about when I was visiting my old childhood friend. She had paid for an interviewer to do an audio interview of her parents, and then edit it together to give to her parents and siblings. It sounded like a great idea, and one that my sisters and I had tried to do a couple times before. I decided that Thanksgiving would provide an excellent opportunity to do a video interview of my dad, as it allowed for plenty of opportunities to do 30-minute to one-hour interview sessions.

I reached out to my sister-in-law (to ask the nephews) and sisters to see if they had any questions they would like to ask my dad. There were a lot, everything from “were you teased by your sisters” to “what was life like during WWII” to “how did you know Grandma was ‘the one’?” I printed out the questions, packed my tripod, lavalier mic, lights, and iPhone adapter and headed down to see my dad.

It was very simple to use my iPhone to record the interviews and it was small enough not to be intimidating. The external microphone allowed for good sound quality. The lights were unneeded (and unwanted by my dad). Each session was no more than one-hour, and combined there were 2 hours of video. Each session followed the questions sent, so they were in no particular order. I wanted the interview to be more like a conversation than an interrogation, so the topics would meander and double back occasionally. This required a little more work on the backend.

Once I got home, I used a simple movie editing software on my Mac to cut out dead air, dog barking, my questions, and any false-starts with answers. I then created a simple storyboard to create some themes: School, Growing up in Bancroft, Growing up on the Farm, Food, Family, WWII, College and Career. Once these were decided, I edited the sections of video to create a story within each of the themes. I added some old 8mm film that was digitized, as well as scanned photos, to provide context to what my dad was talking about.

The end result was much better than I thought it would be. I am also very happy to have some enduring bit of my dad and his history for me and for his grandsons. I look forward to doing more of these interviews.