The first dance is an important part of many weddings which traditionally involves the two newlyweds. In the cases of two separate sets of participants who visited the MobileBooth in Jacksonville, Florida, however, that tradition was adjusted ever so slightly.

Tricia Jones came to the MobileBooth with her mother Gen Fields and talked about some of her favorite memories. “I will always remember us dancing because I can’t dance with anybody else the way I can dance with you,” said Tricia. “It was really special for me to get to, unscripted, unplanned, get to dance with you at my wedding party. It was a big party, but you know, it was awesome to have the opportunity to dance with you and get you to show your stuff and twirl me around the floor and make me look damn good!”

“You’re very good,” said Gen.

“Only because of you,” said Tricia.

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Can you do the Chicano Clap? No? Well, StoryCorps knows a few folks out West you can give a call…

KJZZ on-air personality Marcos Najera shared the StoryCorps experience with his parents, Ascencion “Sonny” Najera and Yolanda Najera, and his godmother, Rosie López. Earlier that day, Yolanda and Rosie marched with other locals in Phoenix, Arizona’s Stop the Hate March. Led by the National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON), one of this peaceful demonstration’s goals was to raise public awareness of the need for immigrants’ rights and equal opportunities.

The morning’s activities sparked the Najera’s afternoon conversation, bringing about memories of similar demonstrations in the 1960s and 1970s when Sonny, Rosie, and Yolanda, all long-time friends, attended Arizona State University. This was during the early days of Chicanos por La Causa, an equal rights advocacy organization that Sonny initiated and helped name. Looking back on his years of activism, Sonny says, “We live in a world of many races. So, we have to be ready to help everybody. That, to me, is my goal.”

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One of the great privileges of working on the StoryCorps project is that as Facilitators, we are occasional witnesses to wonderful first person accounts of history that make all of those high school history lessons come to life, and seem more relevant. Participant Frank Scardiglia tells such a story to his son Mark Scardiglia at the StoryBooth in Lower Manhattan. Growing up in Lucca, Italy during WWII, he describes the summer of 1944 when SS soldiers occupied the small town before the liberation. “That was a very very painful part of our lives. There was a shortage of food, we were under constant bombardment.” Young men were frequently shot on sight and Frank learned to dodge mortar. “I learned to recognize when the shell came near us because the pitch of the sound decreased at a very rapid rate. As long as the shell kept a very high pitch I knew it was going over us and we were safe. Otherwise it was a bad situation.”

We were very glad when the Americans came. All the bells in the [church] steeples of Lucca started peeling like it was Easter.” It was the 92nd Division of African American Soldiers, also known as Buffalo Soldiers that liberated Lucca that day, and Frank’s encounter with one of the soldiers is particularly compelling.

“We were glad when we saw someone with a darker face because we knew they were not Germans! I came in contact with one. I knew not a single word of English, [but] I wanted him to tell my grandparents in Chicago that we were ok.” So he picked up an Italian-English Dictionary and using one word at a time, relayed the message. The soldier found his family’s address and three months later he got word from his grandparents that they had received the letter.

Frank never saw the soldier again, but his memory of that day and gratitude for the soldier’s service left indelible marks on his life.

MobileBooth East kicked off the first stop of 2010 amid the palm trees and students of Miami Dade’s Wolfson Campus. On an unseasonably cold day in Miami, outdoor heaters warmed the crowd as we snacked on guava pastelitos and café con leche.

Site Supervisor Whitney Henry-Lester, Facilitator Virginia Lora, and Miami-Dade Community College students

While in Miami, MobileBooth East is partnering with WDNA public radio to record the stories of Latino and Hispanic communities as part of StoryCorps Historias. And we were thrilled to welcome new Mobile Facilitator—and Miami local—Virginia Lora to the road.

Manuel and Mercedes Quiroga

For the first conversation of the day, Mercy and Manny Quiroga talked about family. Manny began the conversation by sharing memories of his father, Manuel Quiroga, who Manny remembers as a strong, determined man, “with great hands.” Manny particularly remembers the time that his father sawed through a ficus tree in their backyard in Havana, Cuba. Fifteen feet in diameter, the tree was so large that its roots were interfering with the house’s plumbing. Manny’s father only had access to a tiny pruning saw, so he spent every Saturday and Sunday for two years sawing, stroke by stroke, through the ficus’s huge trunk.

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We’re all only human, that’s for sure. But here in Yuma, Arizona, everybody is also Yuman. Or at least that’s what they call the people from this sunny town of just under 195,000 people. Yuma lies just five minutes from the border of California, and just 20 minutes from the border of Mexico. Recorded as the sunniest place on earth and the iceberg lettuce capital of the world, Yuma ain’t a bad place to be for the wintry month of January! Site Supervisor Anna Walters, brand-new Facilitator Jorge Rios, and I joined the rest of the snowbirds to soak up the sun and collect some stories — particularly those of Latinos, as part of StoryCorps Historias. While in Yuma, MobileBooth West partners with KAWC, Colorado Public Media, as well as the Yuma County Main Library, where the Booth is parked.

Lenore Stuart and her mother, Mary Redondo Lorona, were among the first participants to come in and share some of their family history and favorite stories. Mary’s father, Jose Maria Redondo, first came through Yuma from Altar, Mexico on his way to California during the Gold Rush. Taken by the beauty of Yuma, he swore he would come back one day. And 10 years later, that is exactly what he did. He even changed the name of the territory from Arizona City to Yuma, after the Yumans, who were the chief Indian inhabitants of the area.

Jose served many roles in the Yuma community, including mayor for some time. A lover of music, Jose ordered a Steinway Grand Piano in New York City to be shipped from France to Yuma so that any child who wanted to could learn to play. The Panama Canal, however, had not been constructed yet, so the piano was shipped all the way around Cape Horn and up the western coast until it arrived in Yuma, its keys jingling down Main Street.

The piano is still in tact today, although out of tune, and has been passed around various family homes for some time. Mary, herself, never truly learned to play, but she has many memories of the piano still. “I’m wherever that piano is,” Mary reflected. “It’s old, but it’s a great piano.” And at 95, Mary may be old, but she sure is a great storyteller.

Hector “Nicer” Nazario grew up in the South Bronx interested in art, but there were few outlets to quench his thirst. In the 1980s there weren’t many art school programs, so he was drawn to the art and color that surrounded him. The South Bronx landscape consisted of abandoned buildings and rubble, but it was the graffiti that decorated the walls and subway cars that caught Hector’s eye. “We didn’t know we were poor, for us it was just kids playing in our surroundings…it was just fun.” Hector chose the nickname Nicer for himself that remains his nom de plume. “It started as “Too Nice but then I found out there was a ‘Too Nice’ in Brooklyn. So I added an “er” [to Nice]. I liked the way it looked.”

Hector “Nicer” Nazario is considered one of the pioneers of the Hip Hop movement. Nicer and his crew would paint backdrops for Afrika Bambaataa’s shows and if you look closely you’ll see the work of Nicer and his friends in Bambaataa’s Planet Rock Video. That’s him scrawling on the glass near the end of the video in the ice blue cap and matching jacket.

“We didn’t realize we were doing work. The cash was alright but it was more about the paint. It was our lifestyle, our expression, [we were] identifying with the people from our community.” His mother didn’t think much of it at the time. “Eso no te va dejar nada” which translates to “That won’t leave you with anything.” Thirty years later, Nicer is still painting and his company Tats Cru are commissioned to do murals all over the world.

Last month, StoryCorps San Francisco opened up the booth for some very special participants: The security staff at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. We have worked for over a year at the museum with these guards and became intrigued by their varied origins, diverse backgrounds, and unique stories.

This event not only gave these co-workers a chance to find out what we do as StoryCorps Facilitators, but also gave us the chance to get to know some of the amazing stories behind these familiar faces. In addition to English, interviews were recorded in Swahili and Tagalog.

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To escape New York City’s falling temperatures – and to record a few stories for the Memory Loss Initiative – the Door-to-Door team visited Melbourne, Florida’s Leeza’s Place and Joe’s Club, two local adult day care facilities in Brevard County.

In Melbourne, word of mouth was a magical thing, on our last day of recording we met England native Geraldine Condon, who was brought to Joe’s Club by her daughter and son after reading of our visit in Florida Today.

Some of Geraldine’s favorite memories took place in Kent, England, where she remembers time spent with family on St. Margaret Bay at her grandmother’s home. Later, during World War II, amid the fighting and her travels as a nurse with Queen Victoria’s Nursing Service in the Bradford Royal Infirmary, the possibility of happiness outside England serendipitously made itself known.

After numerous assignments throughout the United Kingdom and North Africa, Geraldine was sent to Rome, Italy. “It was there I met a certain American Army officer, and we clicked,” she remembers. “Jack G. Condon.” Geraldine and Jack’s first date and engagement (and having six children!) were a blur, she says, but she will always remember Rome because her marriage to Jack was the first to take place in the war-torn city after the American troops’ arrival.

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This month StoryCorps visited Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden, New Jersey and recorded touching and heartfelt conversations about Lourdes, the city of Camden, and the lives of the hospital community.

From patients, doctors, nurses, and cafeteria staff to the CEO, board members, and founders of the Medical Center, our participants were kind and caring people who are dedicated to their work and reflect the Center’s mission to serve all those who come through their doors with “reverence, compassion and integrity in a simple, joyful and hospitable manner.”

Two of our storytellers were celebrating 50 years of service to their communities, and shared their wisdom with us.

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José C. Massó III was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1950. As a child, he grew up in Puerto Rico as well as Japan (where his father was stationed with the U.S. Army).

José started college at the University of Puerto Rico, but he decided to come to the United States to pursue a degree in journalism. He ended up at Antioch College in Ohio. José was excited to come to the United States, and thought he had many advantages: “I came armed for success in a sense that I already knew how to speak English and I knew a lot about United States history and culture. I was a baseball fan. I knew about music.”

José remembered his first day at Antioch:

I was having lunch and an African American called me the “n-word.” And I said, “Why are you calling me that?” And he said to me that I didn’t look Puerto Rican.

And I said, “What’s a Puerto Rican supposed to look like?” He said, “Well, they don’t look like you.”

That was my first day on campus, and I thought, “What was that?” On a very progressive, liberal university campus, that was the last thing I expected.

Within a week, I went through a series of shocks having to do with race, language, and culture. I realized that I knew more about the United States than the United States knew about me. And it was the moment that I decided that maybe my role was to be an educator.

After Antioch, José moved to Boston and taught at Copley Square High School. He also pursued his passion for communications and music by starting a radio show on WBUR called ¡Con Salsa! with José Massó. More than 34 years later, José still hosts ¡Con Salsa! and has devoted his life to education, communications, music, and politics.

José’s interview was recorded in partnership with the Latino Professional Network.