Come tell your story, tomorrow

by Joseph Kimpflen

The best thing about our history, is how much of it is saved, to teach and inspire us. The worst thing about our history, is how much of it is lost, forever, every day. Tomorrow (Thursday, March 16), our effort to change that, right here in Tupper Lake, revs back into gear.

Tupper Tale Tellers (T3) is an oral history project, dedicated to preserving the rich history of our area by tapping the memories of those who lived it. At the same time, the program seeks to foster cross-generational communication and understanding, because it is our young people who take the lead in collecting older residents’ stories. T3 operates with the cooperation of both the Tupper Lake Central School District and the Goff-Nelson Library.

Launched in 2019 with a grant from the Aseel Legacy Fund, the program quickly won the participation of a core group of about 15 Tupper Lake High School students, and got off to a vigorous start. Local residents interviewed early on included John Amoriell (at the time the town’s oldest resident, at 109) and town historian Jon Kopp (with participation from Birch Boys entrepreneur Garrett Kopp). The COVID epidemic forced T3, like so much else, to go on hold, although not before the students found ingenious workaround for the virus, interviewing well-known Tupper Laker Jim Frenette remotely via Zoom, as well as family members at home.

Tomorrow’s session, to be held in the Community Room (entrance off back parking lot) of the Library from 1p.m. to 4p.m. is open to all. It will be all at once an open house for anyone interested in learning about T3; a jump-start to get the program going again post-COVID; and a chance to conduct actual interviews. In addition to high school students currently involved in T3, expected participants include middle-school students hoping to join the effort, and graduates who were active in the program’s pre-COVID era. Future plans for T3- including a soon-to-be-launched website, and longer-term plans for how the taped interviews will be organized, stored, and made available to the public—will also likely be discussed.

So, think back on your life and times, and what you could tell the future. How you coped with severe winters in years gone by. What Tupper Lake High School was like for a student in the 1970s. Memorable hunting seasons over the years. Work in the woods, on the railroads, and at great camps. Businesses come and gone in town. Soldiers returning from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Family life during the Depression. The Spanish Flu epidemic of 1919 (ok, maybe not that one). But you get the idea. You remember more than you think you do, and it’s a lot more important, and interesting, than you think it is!

In addition to providing seniors the satisfaction of telling their stories, and giving all of us a precious historical record to draw upon, it’s not hard to see the potential benefits for the students involved. The act of interviewing, itself, builds self-confidence, listening and thinking ability, and good interpersonal and social skills. Subsequent work, editing and organizing the raw material of interview tapes, should involve critical thinking and analytic skills, as well as decision-making ability, not to mention command of grammar, spelling and punctuation. Not a bad haul of learning, in an era when young people are too-frequently seen as overly focused on social media and gaming, to the detriment of traditional academic skills.

T3 operates with the adult supervision of Adirondack Experience veterans Caroline Welsh and Christine Campeau, and of TLHS’s Wendy Cross.

So, come out tomorrow, to encourage our young people in a great initiative—and maybe to tell your own stories of the colorful life you have lived, and that is now a part of our rich, shared history. If you cannot come tomorrow, but want to be interviewed, or know someone who does, reach out to Goff-Nelson Library Director Courtney Carey (518-359-5186; goffnelson@gmail.com), and she will put you in touch with the T3 team.