Oral History | History Sidebar

Are you looking for someone to help capture the company founder’s memories before she retires or did you decide to preserve your family’s intangible heritage after listening to a Story Corps segment? What about that book you thought about doing to commemorate your company’s anniversary?

For more than 25 years I have been interviewing people in their offices, factories, homes, and farm fields. As a journalist I interviewed notables you may know (B.B. King, ZZ Top, Graham Nash, and Carlos Santana) and some folks you may not know (Ahmet Ertegun, George Britton, Tabby Thomas, Jay Ungar, and Jeff Kumer). I have interviewed a blues musician (Roy Book Binder) between gigs at a rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike and a woodworker (Lawrence Hojo) who once made sounding sticks for Pennsylvania coal miners and an active duty army captain nearing the end of his hitch temping as a town crier Pittsburgh newspaper strike.

Working with clients to document their business history, I have interviewed a former D.C. mayor and the federal regulators who tried to rein in his administration. I interviewed a prominent developer in his penthouse office from which he pointed to landmarks across the Washington area skyline that his company had built. I have interviewed women who were single-family heads of households who took leadership roles in their apartment buildings to galvanize tenant groups to purchase the buildings and transform them into limited equity cooperatives or condominiums. And, in 2010 I made a video for a client featuring interviews and photography documenting supportive housing programs for chronically homeless women in Washington.

Whatever your interviewing and oral history needs may be, I can help you find the ways to meet them using digital audio, video, and photography.

2011 interview