StoryCorps CEO Sandra M. Clark speaks as a part of the Chautauqua Lecture Series Wednesday in the Amphitheater.
Sandra M. Clark, CEO of StoryCorps — the nonprofit organization that collects and preserves recordings of stories from people across the United States — has always had a love for telling stories, broadening her viewpoints and amplifying the voices of others.
As she leads StoryCorps’ mission of building communities and sharing stories, she said Wednesday morning that she’s grateful to come to Chautauqua for the first time, and admires the Institution’s dedication to embracing different viewpoints and lifelong learning.
In May, Chautauqua Institution launched a partnership with StoryCorps in celebration of its sesquicentennial with an initiative that aims to record 150 stories and conversations from Chautauquans, preserving them in Chautauqua’s 150th Anniversary StoryCorps Archive in the Library of Congress.
“I’ve done a lot of reading about Chautauqua before I came, but there’s nothing that tells the story better than the people who are actually here,” she said. “It means a lot to us that we’ve been able to be a part of your archiving of these stories.”
For her Wednesday lecture in the Amphitheater, as the keynote for the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle Class of 2024’s Recognition Day events and part of the Week Seven theme of “Wonder and Awe — A Week Celebrating Chautauqua’s Sesquicentennial,” she spent the evening prior listening to the Chautauqua stories recorded so far this summer. Hearing families and lifelong friends recount their lives and memories of Chautauqua brought tears to her eyes.
“From young people who said they discovered the ‘magic of freedom’ and the feeling of the wind as they rode their bikes, and what it meant to be a part of everything with everyone,” she said, to Chautauquans who fell in love on the grounds, and others who brought their parents back to Chautauqua for their final goodbyes, “there’s something powerful.”
Clark shared several StoryCorps’ recordings, with text and images on the Amp screens, to highlight the mission of fostering connections through storytelling. In honor of the Institution’s sesquicentennial, the first recording she shared was one between Journey Gunderson, who took the helm as executive director of the National Comedy Center in Jamestown in 2018, and Kelly Carlin, daughter of comedian George Carlin, and a frequent Chautauqua program guest. The pair, who became friends and colleagues, reflected on the Comedy Center’s close proximity to the Institution and how comedy is intertwined in Chautauqua’s spirit.
In the recording, Journey shared her first memories of Chautauqua: visiting her grandmother, who was the hostess of the Hagen-Wensley House for guest speakers and performers. During what she called a “normal day visiting Grandma,” she met Mister Rogers and encountered people like
Jane Goodall.
“What she was doing that seemed so casual as a hostess was this microcosm of what Chautauqua does as a whole, where she was just bringing people together to connect and have a conversation,” she said in the recording.
She introduced Kelly to Chautauqua, and she was immediately drawn to how the Institution brings people from different backgrounds and beliefs together in one shared environment to experience. As an atheist, Kelly said that she was at first apprehensive about the Institution’s ties to religion, but she fell in love with how people seemed to embrace one another and welcome a variety of views.
“For me, that’s my big love of Chautauqua,” Kelly said. “It is a place that is interested in exchange of ideas and fostering open hearts and open minds.”
For Clark, the conversation was representative of both StoryCorps and Chautauqua.
“As I listened to this piece and watched it, I realized that StoryCorps and Chautauqua are two sides of the same coin,” Clark said. “That is what StoryCorps stands for, too; how do we see the humanity in each other and how do we see each other as human beings first?”
This reflection on humanity led her to a story of her parents, David and Kinko Clark, who she said are her “North Star” — they, she said, “are wonder and awe.”
Growing up, Clark said she used to think everyone had a Japanese mother and an African-American father.
Her father, a career soldier who grew up in Louisiana, joined the U.S. Army to fight for the American Dream — even, as Clark said, people like him were still fighting for their own freedom.
She said that in the current climate, the life of military families is often displayed through cheerful reunion videos on social media and that what “military life” is truly like is rarely shown.
“As military kids, we had no idea what service meant and we had no idea what a Purple Heart meant,” she said.
As a child, she and her siblings begged her father to stop wearing the same Purple Heart hat that he always wore — a symbol that she later found out served as recognition of his heroism and sacrifice.
Looking back on her childhood, Clark views her late father as a hero; she said she wishes she could say “thank you” one more time.
After her father retired in Kansas, he became a “mall-walker,” Clark said, where he would spend hours on end walking around the mall and making connections with the employees he always talked to. After he passed away, Clark discovered from people working in the mall that her father helped save their marriages and heal their families.
“We finally understood that what he was doing was consultations with people in need,” she said. “He was the original great listener.”
Her parents met when her father was stationed in Japan, and her mother, who was known by most of her American friends as “Kate,” was the “wisest and smartest person” Clark ever knew.
After her mother passed away, in a drawer Clark found slivers of paper with English words on them. They were her mother’s flashcards that she practiced with.
Clark knows what it feels like to experience great loss. After her brother died in a motorcycle accident at the age of 15, she said what “saved” her dad was turning his love to his co-worker’s son, “Little Lucas,” who “clung to him like he was Captain Wonder and Awe, imitating him down to his clothes.”
As “Little Lucas” grew up, Clark said her family was worried his love for their father would wane, but it never did.
“My parents experienced the beauty and possibility of what this country has to offer and the hard truths of America’s sometimes-unmet promise,” she said. “Their biggest gift to me and my sisters was raising us to see humanity — to remind us to let light in and to release light out. That’s what radiates from so many of these StoryCorps stories, and that is why StoryCorps is so personal to me.”
The organization was founded in 2003 by Dave Isay with a goal of allowing ordinary people to share their experiences and record their stories. It started as a soundproof booth in New York’s Grand Central Terminal with two microphones and a facilitator from the organization. At first, the booth sat empty and no one seemed to be interested in using the space to talk about their lives.
Eventually, the program took off. Now, StoryCorps has gathered conversations from more than 620,000 Americans, recorded and preserved at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. It is the largest archive of human voices ever recorded with a facilitator.
Clark said the organization also travels across the country on tours, allowing communities — who may not otherwise get the chance — to record stories of their lives, loved ones and friends and have them preserved for future generations.
“These powerful stories are about how they saved lives, how they fell in love, how they surprised themselves, how they made amends and how they defied the odds,” she said. “Most of these stories will never end up in a headline in a newspaper or on NPR as a featured piece, but the stories all have a power in them that provides us with wisdom that we can reflect on.”
Clark shared another StoryCorps story – one that she called a “classic.” It was a story of Danny Perasa, a “snaggletooth horse-betting clerk” who came to a StoryCorps booth in New York over and over, bringing in people as varied such as a Major League Baseball umpire, an undercover narcotics officer, and eventually, a nurse named Annie. Danny proposed to Annie on their first date, and she said yes. They recorded an interview in the booth, telling each other what marriage and their love meant to each other.
Several years after the interview was recorded, Danny was diagnosed with end-stage pancreatic cancer. In his honor, StoryCorps held a ceremony at Grand Central Terminal and renamed the original booth “The Danny and Annie Perasa Booth.”
A week later, he contacted the organization saying he was too sick to come to the booth. He asked for StoryCorps to come to his house to record a final interview with him and his wife.
In their last interview together, Danny and Annie reaffirmed their love, even as Danny’s time was coming to an end. Accepting that Annie would have to live the rest of her life without Danny by her side, they said that their love would live through “eternity.”
“I want to be sure that you (Annie) understand that my love for you up to this point was as much as it could be and it’ll be as much as it could be for eternity,” Danny told Annie in the recording.
The interview was recorded on a Thursday and was broadcast on NPR the next Friday. Danny was able to hear his love for his wife shared with millions of listeners. An hour later, he passed away.
Annie received thousands of condolence letters from StoryCorps listeners. She made copies of them to put in the casket with Danny.
“It was supposed to remind him, a guy who was so often teased and looked down upon, that he mattered,” Clark said.
Annie and Danny “personify” StoryCorps, Clark said, of “the elegance and grace and power and humanity in the words of everyday people hiding in plain sight all around — if we only take the time to listen. That’s wonder and awe.”
There were more examples Clark shared — including that of Mary Johnson and Oshea Israel. Oshea killed Mary’s only son, and was serving a 25-year sentence for second degree murder. Years after her son’s death, Mary visited Oshea in prison. They grew close and, after his release, lived as neighbors. When Mary died, Oshea was a pallbearer.
These are stories about finding shared humanity, Clark said. She shared that, a few years ago, Isay had a big idea — “David and Goliath Big.” The StoryCorps founder was concerned about increasing divides and dehumanization in the United States.
“He began to think about how StoryCorps could rise to this moment where we were not seeing each other as human beings in the way we needed to,” Clark said. “StoryCorps embarked on (the initiative) One Small Step, an effort to remind the country of the humanity of all of us — even the humanity of those with whom we disagree.”
The statistics Isay was paying attention to, Clark said, were grim: “40% of each party view the other party as downright evil. One in 5 Republicans and Democrats agree with the statement that their political adversaries lack the traits to be considered fully human. About 20% of Democrats and Republicans think the country would be better off if large numbers of the opposite side were dead. And 23% of Americans now say they may have to resort to violence in order to save
our country.”
But newer research shows that the country is “exhausted” by division. Journalists run to the fire, she said, but “how much room do we leave for hope and humanity?”
With One Small Step, StoryCorps brings together two people with differing views to record a conversation — not debate, just talk, and get to know each other as people.
“We don’t start the conversation with battling it out,” Clark said, “but we start the conversation in StoryCorps’ lane, which is, how do we see each other as a human being first?”
Clark shared some examples with the Amp audience — these aren’t “kumbaya” moments by any means, but it’s a start. Further, when the conversations are played back, and people see others in their community modeling this bridge-building, it makes them feel like they can do something, too.
“We’re showing that it not only makes people feel more hopeful and not only changes perceptions of the person and interview partner, but it changes perceptions of whole groups,” Clark said.
Through this powerful work, over the course of two years at StoryCorps, Clark shared how her life has been impacted.
“Stories have helped me believe in myself and StoryCorps helped me believe in someone else, so helping us believe in each other is so powerful,” she said. “Where do we hear that message anywhere anymore?
