I spend a great deal of my time chasing ghosts.
Not the kind that rattle chains or haunt old houses, but the quiet ghosts that linger in dusty archives, fading photographs, and yellowed newspaper clippings. They are the voices of people whose stories were nearly lost to time.
If you’ve been following me on my journey, you know that one of those voices belongs to Ida Alice Flagler. The deeper I dig into her life, the more convinced I become that it is my job to tell her story. History doesn’t always remember the right people, or tell their stories fairly. It is those with the most power whose voices are loudest, while the quieter truths wait patiently for someone willing to tell them.
It has made me wonder how many “Alices” exist in our own families.
Perhaps it was your grandmother who crossed an ocean with nothing but a suitcase. Maybe it was an uncle who served his country, but never spoke of the experience. Or a neighbor who quietly devoted decades to helping others, without ever asking for recognition. Every family has someone whose story deserves to be remembered.
Memories disappear much faster than we think. Every time we lose a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or lifelong friend, we lose a library of stories that can never be replaced. And not everyone has the natural inclination to document the lives of others. But we can create oral histories, like our ancestors did before there was such a thing as written language. In fact, there are still some societies who continue the oral history tradition.
There are now services available that make it easy for anyone to document their own story. My mother-inlaw received one as a gift for Christmas last year, and it brought her such joy telling her story. And she was able to print little books for all of her kids, who now know so much more about her than they ever did.
What if we all became storytellers for someone in our families?
Instead of asking, “How are you?” we can ask, “What was your happiest childhood memory?” “Who was your first love?” “What was the hardest decision you ever made?” “What world event changed your life?” The answers may surprise you and reveal parts of your own history you’ve never heard before.
Some of the services available for this are Remento, Storykeeper and Memorygram. These tools make it too easy not to document the lives of the people who made us who we are. Years from now, those conversations may become the greatest inheritance your family ever receives.
If searching for Alice has taught me anything, it is that every life has a story worth telling.