True stories of everyday people
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Betty Jo-Ann Montgomery Perry
With tears in her eyes, young Betty Jo-Ann listened to her first youth orchestra in NYC and realized that playing music would be a way to escape a life limited by poverty.
Albert Leslie Coleman
Albert Colemen, a drummer like his father, reflects on playing Jazz all over the world with many of Indy’s best musicians.
Gwendolyn Julia (Judy) Kelley
Gwendolyn Kelley tells about seeing the change in Indianapolis during the civil rights movement and the legacy of her poem about Martin Luther King Jr., “The Dream In You.”
Jackie Nytes
From Jackie Nytes account of learning about the issues facing inner city families though her neighbor Dorothy’s family in a newly integrated Mapleton Fall Creek neighborhood South of 38th Street.
Carol Bussell
Born in New York, Carol Bussell is a professor at IUPUI who uses stories in her teaching. She came to her Life Stories intervew with family artifacts, journals, diaries, photos, and most importantly books!
Jeanette Marie Sawi
While visiting Greece with her brother, Jeanette Sawi took a side trip that changed her life. In this excerpt of the story of how the The Island of Santorini Restaurant in Fountain Square area in Indianapolis came to she tells about meeting the man she would marry.
Marcia Louise Baker
Commuting from Tallahassee, Florida to Pelham, Georgia, Marcia Baker taught in an all boys school in the early 1970’s. She tells about bringing a new cassette recorder and tough love to her classroom of underprivileged children.
Kenneth Oguss
Fresh, tart cherries, a flock of hungry birds, gifts of lemons and seeds for the future. Ken Oguss tells the story of how fathers pass along the legacy of love to their sons and daughters.
Lou Ann Homan
All that her three little boys wished for Christmas was a pony. But in order to raise the $75 dollars to pay for it their homesteading mother would have to bake THIRTY PUMPKIN PIES for Thanksgiving … with no electricity, no running water and a wood burning stove! This...