“At my age, you don’t want to do anything if its not fun,” said Rose Brudno as she got ready for her interview at the StoryCorps East MobileBooth in Akron, Ohio.

Luckily, Rose seemed to have a pretty good time remembering her many bartending years with her grandson Joshua during their interview. After divorcing her husband in the 1950s, Rose moved to Akron with her three kids and took over the Zanzabar, a tavern in a working-class African American neighborhood where most of the patrons were employed by Akron’s rubber industry. Rose, a white Jewish woman from Cleveland, stood out for more reasons than one. Open 21 hours a day, the bar was filled at 5:00 a.m. with men from the rubber-factory night-shift, singing and dancing and breakfasting at the bar.

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Akron, Ohio. Birthplace of the rubber tire as we know it. Goodyear. Goodrich. Firestone. The American Trucking Industry. Hometown of Alcoholics Anonymous, Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech, Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders, the new wave band Devo, and basketball player LeBron James.

We cut the StoryBooth ribbon in this historic city on a cold day in front of the Akron-Summit County Public Library. WKSU, our public broadcasting host, warmed up the crowd with coffee and pastries while former Deputy Mayor Dorothy Jackson and Reverend Dr. Ronald Fowler christened the booth with the first conversation of the day.

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When they imagine having an impact on future generations and how they will be remembered in the future, people often think of parenting children. But as these interviews from Erie, Pennsylvania show, there are many ways to leave a legacy.

Father Bob: A True Man

Jim Murray and his son Bob Murray came to the MobileBooth to talk about Father Bob, Jim’s older brother and a devoted priest. Jim and Father Bob are the two youngest sons in an Irish-Catholic family of five boys, all with big personalities. The other brothers became engineers, attorneys, and insurance partners, but Father Bob knew from the age of nine that he’d become a priest.

Jim recalled, “He was never a pastor…He was quiet. If we were in a room, and if there were thirty people in that room, I’d go around and meet thirty people and I’d remember who they were and where they were from. But if there were two people in that room that were hurting, and one was thinking about suicide, somehow they would talk to Father Bob. And he would make them feel better about themselves.”

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When Esmeraldaliz Torres was seven, she wanted to play the violin. She had signed up for classes at Erie’s Inner-City Neighborhood Art House, but the violin didn’t work out for her. Instead, they gave her a cello.

Esmeraldaliz’s mother Janet remembers the moment she first saw her daughter play. Esmeraldaliz was only seven years old, and Janet “got scared for her first performance because the actual cello was bigger than her.” They both laugh when they talk about that day. “I really didn’t know how you were supposed to play the cello, so I put a miniskirt on her, and that didn’t work because it had to go in between her legs. They ended up making a long skirt for her.”

Now eleven, Esmeraldaliz is one of the best cellists at the Inner-City Art House, and Janet is still front-and-center at her performances.

Not everything has always gone so seamlessly in the Torres family. Janet’s own mother wasn’t around when she was growing up in the Bronx. No one she knew played the cello, and few people in her family finished high school. Esmeraldaliz is an honor student, but she still struggles sometimes with math. Janet remembers working together on long division. “At the time I was still going for my GED because I was a high school dropout. But it was a pretty good process because we learned together… Once I got on that graduating stage, it was like I could to anything. All I could hear was my name being screamed. My kids and my husband.” Leaning into the mic, Esmeraldaliz imitates her family, yelling “Mom mom mom!”

At the end of their conversation, Janet looks at her daughter. She asks: “What’s the first memory you have of me?”

Esmeralda takes a moment before she replies: “The first time that I ever performed. When I saw your face.”

“And what did you think?”

“I thought you were really proud of me.”

“I was.”

“She was actually, like, kind of crying.”

Janet laughs. “Tears of joy, though. I was real proud. It’s like I couldn’t believe that I did such a good job that she was up there.”

Opening day in Erie, Pennsylvania was a big event! Reporters from our public broadcasting host, WQLN, were on hand to cover our arrival as were local ABC affiliate WJET-TV, NBC affiliate WICU Channel 12 and the Erie Times.

Site Supervisor Anna Walters (above) welcomed the assembled press and curious onlookers to the MobileBooth. Meanwhile, new Mobile Facilitator Lilly Sullivan facilitated our first interview in Erie, a remembrance by family members of  John Kanzius. He was an inventor, radio and TV engineer, and ham radio operator in Erie. John passed away in February of this year but made headlines after he developed an innovative treatment for cancer using radio waves.

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Emeterio “Pete” Otero (far left), a dean of Monroe Community College, arrived at the MobileBooth in Rochester, New York on a cool Sunday morning with his son Christopher (far right) and grandsons Jeremiah (center right) and Noah (center left). Emeterio’s grandsons were intrigued by stories of their grandfather getting his teeth knocked out during a middle-school fight; parachuting through night skies in the Air Force; and going back to school via the G.I. Bill. They also inquired about rumors they had heard that Emeterio was once beat up by a girl during middle school, which their granddad gleefully confirmed is true.

Yet it was Emeterio’s transition from academic obscurity to established scholar that intrigued his grandsons the most. Emeterio lived in Buffalo, New York and was a member of “the only Puerto Rican family in [his] neighborhood.” His parents emigrated to the Northeast from Puerto Rico during the 1950’s when Emeterio was seven. His father had been a farmer in Cieles, Puerto Rico and Emeterio mentions that his “pops had a can-do attitude.” Emeterio’s dad came to the U.S. first, and his mother came over a year later with him and two of his siblings.

There were scuffles, taunts, and derogatory names throughout his school years. Upon entering high school, Emeterio predicted he’d “drop out in the tenth grade.” The level of uncertainty in his life was overwhelming. In the Summer of 1964, Emeterio joined the military at the age of 17. “The airborne stuff sounded really neat…and it was one of the better decisions I ever made because it taught me structure and discipline. If I had stayed on in the same lifestyle, there’s a good chance I could have been dead. Drugs were coming on strong at that point…but I grew up and got a good sense of myself.”

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A grandmother can be a vibrant source of care and inspiration. She might warm our milk, teach us that hard work is important, or remind us that our place in the world is just as important as anyone else’s.

When Orlando Ortiz (right) — a native New Yorker from the Bronx — recalled visiting Puerto Rico during a trip after he graduated middle school, one very distinct person shimmered beyond everything else: his Abuelita (Grandmother) “Salu.” When Orlando visited the Mobile Booth, he described his grandmother to his partner, Paul Tantillo.

“[Salu] was more casual. She smoked cigars. When she needed a handkerchief, she’d get the hem of her skirt, bend over and blow on it.” He laughed. “[She] was very contemporary. She always cut her hair.”

And to Orlando, his Abuelita “Salu” provided a concept that he’s carried on throughout his life.

“For this to be a world, there has to be everything in it. It’s like, the universe has everything in it.”
“Why did she say this?”
“Well, I think she knew I was gay. It was her way of saying ‘that’s alright.’ You accept everything just the way it is because it’s all part of the world.”

Rochester is home to the largest deaf population per capita in the United States. It is also home to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, which is part of the Rochester Institute of Technology.  Thanks to RIT-NITD  and Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley, the MobileBooth East team was able to meet and learn from members of this diverse and dynamic community.

Bob Panara

Bob Panara was NTID’s first deaf faculty member when the school opened in 1968 and founded its English and Theater departments. He became deaf as a young child. Bob loved baseball, so his father once arranged to introduce him to Babe Ruth in hopes that the shock would restore his hearing. It didn’t, but Bob remains an avid baseball enthusiast and is attempting to get a former deaf baseball player, Dummy Hoy, into the Baseball Hall of Fame for his great playing record and for inventing the hand signals still used today in baseball.

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The StoryCorps archive in the Library of Congress is no doubt full of stories about first meetings. Those fateful moments when the lives of people become suddenly and irrevocably linked. Sometimes it happens at a cafe or in the toothpaste aisle at Wegman’s. Sometimes it happens on a blind date the night before you head out of town to work at the Worlds Fair!

For Heather Zajkowski and her husband Chris it happened by mail. “I got on the mailing list of the band you were in, the Essentials, here in Rochester, New York. And you had your [other] band the Squires of the Subterrain [for which] you were sending out postcards,” recalls Heather. “I was like 15, I think, maybe I’d just turned 16. I’m not sure, but I had babysitting money and you were selling tapes and I was like, ‘Oh wow! Yeah! I’m totally going to buy a tape!’”

“You were hilarious,” says Chris. “You actually responded and  you were probably the first and only person to respond with a check and a silly letter and you asked something about like ‘What is this? What am I buying here?’ But you ponied up the money and it was so exciting!”

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StoryCorps’ arrival in Rochester, New York on July 2, 2009 coincides with a year long celebration of the city’s 175th Anniversary. What better way to reflect on Rochester’s rich history than by having Rochesterians share their stories! Despite the drizzle a crowd appeared at the Rundel Library to welcome the MobileBooth East team and hear the sounds of  The Po’Boys Brass Band, the members of which all came together through Rochester’s own Eastman School of Music.

WXXI AM 1370 celebrated its 25th Anniversary on our opening day as well. WXXI President & CEO, Norm Silverstein was on hand to receive a proclamation from Jean Howard, Chief of Staff for Rochester’s Mayor Duffy, declaring July 2, 2009 StoryCorps Day!

If that still wasn’t enough birthday fun, July 2, 2009 was also the 25th birthday of outgoing StoryCorps Mobile Facilitator, Alex Kelly. Alex facilitated during our first week of recordings in Rochester and stayed on to help train Alejandro De La Cruz who makes his MobileBooth debut right here in the Ra-Cha-Cha! Happy trails Ms. Kelly and welcome aboard Mr. De La Cruz!