by Pam Pacelli Cooper President, Verissima Productions Incorporated It was a small haberdashery store in Hyde Park, nestled in the shopping center where everyone in our small community shopped for groceries, went to the Optometrist and filled their prescriptions at the drugstore. I did the same, walking the several blocks from our house to help[Read More]
Family History
The Secret of the Silver Cup: Opening the Door to Personal History
By Pam Pacelli Cooper President, Verissima Productions The ornate silver cup had been given to my husband at his birth, inscribed with his name and birthdate. When our child was born, the same cup was inscribed again with the name and birthdate of our son. We had always been puzzled by the original inscription on[Read More]
Brilling and Bedazzled: Creating New Words
By Pam Pacelli Cooper President, Verissima Productions My family of origin adores words. We did crossword puzzles, word games, Boggle and Scrabble when I was growing up. I was lucky enough to meet and marry someone who is also a lexophile. What his family doesn’t do is create words to capture a feeling, an object, or a process[Read More]
Life Preservers Podcast–Episode 3: An Interview with Francie King
A responsibility not “accepted blithely.” Join us as Francie King of History Keep describes her work with personal history clients, drawing on her years of journalism experience. You’ll also encounter treasured letters, Revolutionary War re-enactors, and a magnificent mother as we enter Part 3 of our journey to find the personal stories of personal historians.[Read More]
Making Choices & Personal History
Opening the Picnic Basket: Reunions, Food, and Personal History
By Pam Pacelli Cooper President, Verissima Productions “Mother’s German potato salad,” “The Rauh sister’s Spice Cake,” “Successful Icing as of 1975,” and “Oy! Lebkuchen.” As I opened the little tin box of my mother in law’s recipes, I was able to see the history of her family in about 100 3×5 cards. Some were written[Read More]
A Wider View
by Pam Pacelli Cooper Verissima Productions Today’s excerpt from the “Abbott Leonard Cohen Tapes,” recorded when he was 91 years old, provide a perfect example of the ways our perceptions can be altered when interviewing subjects or when reading diaries someone has left behind. For most of his life, Len Cohen’s grandson Rob believed that his[Read More]
Building a family history: Where to start?
By Pam Pacelli Cooper Verissima Productions My mother in law Polly died 5 years ago. Her dining room table is now ours, her bed is in our guest room, and we have kept the vow we made when we inherited some of her things to have more dinner parties and to fill our[Read More]