Personalizing History -- Where were you during America's happiest and most tragic moments?
It is extremely rare that we know when history is unravelling before us.
Pearl Harbor. The JFK, RFK and MLK Assasinations. 9/11.
One of the best ways to merge personal history and American history in a personal documentary is to ask your interview subject what he or she was doing when the World Stopped. Tomorrow's interviews might be anticlimactic, with answers like "Why, I was on Twitter, of course."
But your parents and grandparents likely have fascinating snippets on how earth-shattering news impacted the most minute details of their lives.
World War II veteran Clifford Barrett, who helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp in Nazi Germany, was 15-years-old when America entered the war. He heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on the radio. A dramatic reminder of how close teenage years are to adulthood, he was running around Europe with a gun only three years later.
For the past 41 years, Barrett has been writing letters to politicians, celebrities, athletes and military figures -- asking them to share their personal memories of Pearl Harbor. The amazing collection of correspondence, which he refuses to sell to memorabilia dealers, includes replies from President George Bush (the first one), first lady Lady Bird Johnson, golfer Arnold Palmer, broadcast news legend Walter Cronkite and actors Jimmy Stewart, James Cagney and Gene Kelly.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, actor Walter Matthau ("The Bad News Bears") wrote that he was listening to a New York Giants game:
"I was listening to a football game and I thought it was very
presumptuous of them to tell us about Pearl Harbor while this important
game was going on. I have since changed my mind."
Sometimes the contrast of life's simplest things are the most powerful reminders of history.
Of course, putting a life story in a wider historical context need not be centered around tragic events. You may choose to get your interviewee animated about a World Series game, a county fair, a presidential election, the theater release of a classic movie or even the music that was popular decades ago.
These personalized stories used in a Reel Profiles documentary can be enhanced with archival footage and photographs of historic events, and of course, vintage music.
Do you know your grandparents' wedding song?