Interview with My Great Granmother

It was near the end of winter 2005, when my grand-aunt suddenly fell ill. In a short period of time her illness worsened and the doctors informed my family, my grand-aunt only had a couple of months to live. The news was devastating to my family as we watched a vivacious, independent, and outspoken woman, who enjoyed shopping, reading mystery novels and spending time with family become very weak and confined to her bed. Instead of placing my grand-aunt in a hospice facility, my family and I, with the assistance of a hospice nurse cared for my grand-aunt in her home until her passing.

The first person I thought of to interview in my family would be my Great Grandma Laura. There are so many things about her that I don’t know, and there are many questions that I would want to ask her about when she was just a kid. If I could listen to her stories again, and see her smile one more time, then I would be satisfied. I definitely would want to ask her about her parents. Did we keep the traditions that you had with your parents?

The person I interviewed was my mom Peggy Pacheco, She was born on October 27, 1972 at St. Charles Hospital. Her Parents are Sharon Blevins (mom), and Ronald Blevins (dad), Her siblings are Julie (sister) and Bob (brother). She’s only lived in two places, Pemberville, Ohio and Bowling Green, Ohio. My mom had attended Eastwood school when she was younger. She has medium length hair, brown hair, she wears glasses, has lots of freckles and brown eyes.

In the early 1940’s Marie was born into a small tight knit family living in a small rural Kentucky town. Marie is now in her seventies and has led a very interesting life traveling the country, raising four children, and shaping her chosen profession. Our interview sessions were conducted over a period of time, as Marie is very active and has little “free time” to spare.

There is an old African saying, “When an elder dies, it is as if an entire library has burned to the ground.” This happens to be the case when it comes to my family history. Unfortunately, my grandparents' on both sides of my family have passed away and the rest live across the world which can be difficult to contact. My parent’s are going to be my sources for this assignment. They both have provided me with information about their childhood and the lives of my grandparent’s. By using the stories provided from Deborah A. Miranda’s book Bad Indians, I will compare and contrast the lives of my family to hers.

There is an old African saying, “when an elder dies, it is as if an entire library has burned to the ground.” This happens to be the case when it comes to my family history. Unfortunately, my grandparents on both sides of my family have past away and the rest live across the world which can be difficult to contact. My parent’s are going to be my sources for this assignment. They both have provided me with information about their childhood and the lives of my grandparent’s. By using the stories provided from Deborah A. Miranda’s book Bad Indians, I will compare and contrast the lives of my family to hers.

I have recently interviewed my grandmother Mindy. I chose to interview my grandmother because we have a close relationship and I look up to her and love spending every second with her and couldn’t think of a better person to interview than her. The reason for this interview is to get an insight of how her pregnancy coming from her. In this interview I will learn all about her pregnancy, from the beginning to the end. Mindy is my grandmother because she is my mothers mother. Mindy has spent most of her life in Kenya, and now resides now in America.

Upon completion of this assignment, I received the opportunity to interview my great-aunt, Jacqueline Izora Burns Torrance. It was great to get in contact with her and learn about her life and parts of mine along the way. Aunt Jackie is 65 years old is a very inspiring woman who prides herself on her relationship with Christ, being very work-oriented, having upstanding morals/values, and being resilient.

Starting this research project. I felt that I would not be able to find someone to answer my questions. I dislike it because I felt I would not have enough time to interview anyone due to working full time and going to school full time. My subjects were willing to take ten minutes out of their time to sit down with me while I asked them some questions. I experienced a hard time with finding a variety of ethnic subjects, but I did one better. I found a forty-seven-year-old man, a thirty-five-year-old man and a nineteen-year-old girl.

Before I began this project, I jotted a few notes down as to what I thought the definition of faith was. All that really came to my mind was that faith is simply one’s belief in God. In a quest to further understand the true meaning of faith, I needed to find someone with a Catholic background and effusive wisdom. I immediately knew who I was going to interview.

This oral history generational report is about my mother, Mary Fremont on her life experiences and beliefs that guided her in life. To achieve a historical outline of facts and experiences, I interviewed her in person. The interview took about two hours. As the interviewer, I asked five simplistic questions that were mostly open-ended to provide a dialogue that was not hindered by content of the question. Furthermore, on several accounts there were in-depth follow up questions to engage in a deeper discussion that will enhance the oral history report timeline.

I chose to interview my paternal grandmother, V. L. I chose to interview my grandmother because in her 90 years of life, she worked as a nurse, fled Nazi occupied Germany and is one of the biggest role models I have.

According to my great grandmother Betty Winters who is a very special asset to the Murphy family, the nationalities my ancestors identifies with is Black and Indian. My great great grandmother was Black and my grandfather identified as Indian. My ancestors were originally from South Carolina and North Carolina and they migrated to Washington DC for better opportunities. My great grandmother expressed that she cleaned the white house for many of years and her mother was a cab driver in Washington DC. It has also been told that my great grandfather was an electrician for Pepco. My grandmother explained that my ancestors valued family, religion, and work. She mentioned that it was normal for my ancestors to have children at a young age. She expressed that her mother had her during her early teenage years and she started to procreate children at fourteen as well. She indicated that there was no birth control during her time and it was typical for women to have multiple children young. According to my grandmother, the world was a petrifying place during her time. She mentioned that attending church and turning to god was very important for my family. She expressed that religion held the family together and provided comfort from discrimination. She explained that education was not that important to my ancestors because of the injustice they encountered. My great grandmother confessed to having a middle school education and having to work to provide for her family. She mentioned

For this interview, I decided to interview my grandma. Her name is Diane Smith, she is 74 years old and does not look it! She was recently widowed last year, yet they had many happy years together. They had two children together, my Uncle Dave and my mother, Cherie.

I found this assignment to be very enlightening. My family has always been open to talking about our history, but this task forced me to ask a question that often was not discussed: our education. My aunt Patti and my grandmother (Meema) were the ones who offered to help in exploring this part of our past.