The Wished For Interview 2025
- Leslie Ryan
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
Greetings to everyone! We are just entering the Holiday Season for 2025, and demands on our time are high for things other than Family History, aren't they?
I am reposting this mid-December blog from last year as a reminder that your living relatives are your BEST RESOURCE for family history. Talk to everyone you can now; parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and stepfamily members too. Collect their memories!
Best wishes for the rest of this year and the next, and thank you for your support!
Every genealogist has at least ONE person they consider their most Wished For Interview. Who would you want to talk to if it were suddenly possible to transport to another time and place?
My most wished for interviews would be with my grandparents. Here on the left are Nellie and Martin. He passed away when I was still in grade school, I lost her some 20 years later, long before I figured out how different her life had been from her children's and grandchildren's.
I found a book of short stories she won in grade school for good grades. It was a parochial school! I had no idea!
Here is her father, Peter, holding one of his grandchildren at his home in Erie, PA. He was a railroad man, and the son of a railroad man, both immigrants to this country from Ireland.
What were their daily lives like in the late 1800's? What were their joys and worries?
I wish I could ask both sets of grandparents about The Great Depression. What happened to them?
Did they have troubles getting by?
Both of my parents are gone now too. My mother had no bad memories of the Depression, she was too young. But she did remember butter and sugar sandwiches!
I bring this up because I hope to inspire you to visit with your parents and your grandparents to learn as much as you can about how you got to be YOU while you have them. Write their stories down, or record them on your phone! Get that Wished For Interview done NOW! You and your kids may treasure these stories someday!
Merry Christmas! Happy Hannukah! Happy Holidays! Best wishes for you and yours in the New Year!
Best regards,
Leslie Ryan
No copyright infringement is intended. No compensation is received for any links or referrals herein.
