My mother lived a long and interesting life but I did not know very much of it. In fact, I have only parts of stories of my mother. Although she was living with me for the last two years of her life, she was fully in dementia. And because we had been estranged for many years before I took her in, I lost the opportunity to ask her the questions that would inform a fuller memory of her life. When she died at 95, I had so many unanswered questions.

Many in my father’s family had died in the Holocaust. I was never told their stories and first learned that my family suffered under fascism when I was 52 years old. Fortuitously, it was during an episode of 60 minutes, in which a member of my father’s family told the viewing audience that 23 members of the Franzblau family were exterminated by Hitler.

Our stories, the ones told to us, and the stories we tell, become the memories that our friends and family hold dear. These stories, these testimonies to lives lived, are written word documents to be passed on, to become our herstories and histories that create continuity and connection. That is why the voices of our elders must be heard and preserved.

UUCV is beloved to us. But churches are institutions, and an institution is only as strong as its members, each member leaving footprints. Footprints, however, fade over time, just as time erases most things. How do we keep our memories of those of us who have so deeply and profoundly influenced UUCV and affected those of us who have passed through its doors?

Susan Franzblau, Silvia Hutchins, Xenia Young, Neal and Celia Ortenberg, and Joyce Lombard have designed a project to do just that. This project: The Voices of Our Elders – endeavors to preserve those memories through interviews. Our intention is to use these interviews:

As a record for their families and for UUCV;
As a way to honor and celebrate the lives of our elders;
As a way to build a sense of community and connection;
As a recognition for the gifts and other contributions they have left for us; and
As a way for our children to learn from the wisdom of those who came before.

We have already begun, with our first successful interview with Sylvia Wilkholm. Join us in supporting this project. We will interview and record our elders using a pre-set questionnaire that we developed. These interviews will be preserved on a memory stick. We will be selecting elders based on their desire to be interviewed, their age, and medical conditions. Most interviews will be in person but for those who have moved away, we will use the church’s Zoom account.

We ask members of UUCV to get in touch with someone in our group to either set up an interview or become one of our interviewers. This project is ongoing, under the auspices of the Pastoral Associates. Keep our herstory and history alive so that we may all benefit, both now and in the future.

Susan Franzblau