True stories of everyday people

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Georgeanna Marie Tryban

Georgeanna Tryban tells about being a young American exchange student in Osaka, Japan with Youth For Awareness in the 1960’s. A fearless, eager student, she attended traditional Japanese cultural training along with her Japanese host family sisters.

Elizabeth Jeanne Brandt

In an excerpt of her oral history of St. Luke’s United Methodist Church’s Spiritual Life Center the director, Elizabeth Brandt, tells about her love of labyrinths. How did the center come to have three labyrinths for meditative walking? Elizabeth tells the story.

Beverly Martin

As a young person, Beverly Martin applied degrees in Sociology and Library Science along with her parent’s sense of adventure to her work in the VISTA program near Laredo,Texas.

Don Steffy

May 4, 1970, Kent State University in Ohio: Having passed up a chance to attend The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, Don Steffy switched to Bowling Green State University for a draft exempt status. In this excerpt of Don’s life story he tells about...

Diane Lee Richards

Diane grew up admiring her Aunt Helen who, with her husband Don, ran a flight school. It took years to find out that Helen had flown bombers and pursuit planes back during WWII. Diane reflects on the life of her remarkable and yet modest Aunt.

Michael O’Brien

Michael Obrien talks about training to go to India with the Peace Corps in 1973, how growing up in a large family on a Wisconsin dairy farm helped prepare him for that work and how stories and language affect our world view.

Paul Francis Smith

Paul Smith grew up in a Navy family. In the 1960’s when he was a teenager they moved from Athens, Georgia to Monterey, California. Paul talks about the challenge of fitting in and learning to be true to himself.