Final installment (for now) of the Fort Collins Memory Project

by Terry Burton, Digital Media Coordinator

Our last story from the inaugural Fort Collins Memory Project workshop comes from Lew Arlen Meissner, whose family, like many in this area, were Germans from Russia. Enjoy his story here, and if you missed any of the previous four stories, browse back through the last month and be sure to check them out too.

Fourth installment of the Fort Collins Memory Project

by Terry Burton, Digital Media Coordinator

This week’s story of immigration from the Fort Collins Memory Project comes from Kathy Moddelmog, who recalls her parents’ move to Fort Collins after being married in Chickasha, Oklahoma. Read her story here, and be sure to enjoy the previous stories too (look in the “Oral history & oral tradition” category over on the right for links to the other stories).

Third installment of the Fort Collins Memory Project

by Terry Burton, Digital Media Coordinator

The third installment of the Fort Collins Memory Project comes from Stan Schilling and Marol Klein-Goodwin — stories of hard work growing up on the farm (beets for Stan, wheat for Marol) and the strong traditions of the Germans from Russia, including music and dancing the Dutch Hop. Find Stan and Marol’s story here.

A truck load of beets heads to the beet dump

Second installment of the Fort Collins Memory Project

by Terry Burton, Digital Media Coordinator

This week’s story from the Fort Collins Memory project comes from Ann Garbutt Ryan, whose ancestors were early immigrants to the Laporte area. Enjoy Ann’s story here, and if you missed last week’s debut story, you can find it here.

Stories from the Fort Collins Memory Project

by Terry Burton, Digital Media Coordinator

We recently held our first workshop session for the Fort Collins Memory Project (see the post from April 1st for more information about the project). On April 18th, we spent all day with six different people from the community who came in to share their stories of immigration. Participants brought in photos, documents, and objects which we photographed and scanned; we recorded audio snippets from each participant explaining the various elements of their story; and then combined everything into an interactive slideshow using Memory Miner. All in an hour and a half to create each story! Each workshop participant left with a CD of their slideshow, which will also become part of the Museum’s Local History Archive.

We are also publishing these stories on our website, one story at a time, over the next few weeks. The first story is from Kirsten Hovorka, who traces her family back to Denmark and England. You can see her slideshow here. Click any of the thumbnail images to see a larger photo. Many of the slides have audio, too; in the blue box to the right, click the underlined link to listen to Kirsten’s recollections. 

The workshop was a great experience — it’s always a gift when someone shares their story with you. Our stories are all so various, and yet we hear in each of them something that resonates with our own. Because we only had an hour and a half to put together each story, we had to put limits on the process, which created another interesting dimension — to see what people chose to show and talk about, given that they had to “edit” their story into a small space. Rather than a comprehensive family story, what we created together were very personal windows into people’s lives. Because history is more than dates and names; everyone’s history has a heart.

Fort Collins Memory Project

The front page of the Coloradoan is running a great story today about the Fort Collins Memory Project, an event being organized by the Fort Collins Museum as part of Beet Street‘s “Finding Home: Sharing the Journey of our Collective Immigration” series. On April 18th, the Museum will be hosting an all-day workshop where participants can digitize their photos, documents, and small objects and, with the help of Museum staff, create an interactive album of their own immigration story. Not only will participants leave the workshop with their own digital album, but their stories will also become part of the Local History Archive and the larger story of our community.

The workshop was inspired by a similar project at Berkeley’s Magnes Museum and we hope that it will be just the first of many such events. Workshop registration is free, but limited. If you’re interested in participating, please contact Leigh Westphal at the Fort Collins Museum, 970-416-2769, or email her at lwestphal-at-fcgov.com. Registration closes April 8th. For more information, see the Museum’s website.