Hearing Voices
Season 10, Episode 10
November 21, 2022
Stories told by those who lived them
Re-Imagined Radio presents "Hearing Voices," a program about Oral Histories. We sample from the Clark County Historical Museum Oral History Collection to share stories about living and working in Southwest Washington. We feature three in this episode: "Living with Chief Joseph," "Working the SPS Railroad," and "The Russians Arrive."
Access the episode script
Background
"Hearing Voices" features three Oral Histories. Each sampled from the Oral History Collection in the Clark County Historical Museum, Vancouver, Washington. All told in the voices of those who lived them.
Featured Stories
"Living with Chief Joseph" is told by Erskin Wood. In 1893, at the age of 13, he lived with Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce people in the Nespelem Valley, just north of present day Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state. Wood recounts his interesting connection to Chief Joseph, everyday life in his teepee, and his job wrangling the Chief's herd of horses. He tells about the games the young people played, and about the community singing and dancing in which he participated.
"Working the SPS Railroad" is an account by Harry W. Hendricks of his experiences working for the Seattle-Portland-Spokane Railroad, 1950s-1994, during the transition from steam to diesel technologies. Hendricks, a retired conductor, recounts working on the railroad for more than forty years. He talks about the pleasure of traveling through the Columbia River Gorge several times a week. From his enthusiastic storytelling it's obvious that Hendricks enjoyed every minute of his career with the SPS railroad.
"The Russians Arrive" features Leverett Richards, a reporter for the Clark County Sun newspaper, recalling the surprise landing of a single-engine airplane at Vancouver's Pearson Airfield piloted by three Russian airmen, 20 June 1937. Two days earlier, June 18, the plane took off from an airport outside Moscow, Russia, headed for Oakland, California. The Soviet airplane and its crew—Valery Chkalov (pilot), Georgi Baidukov (relief pilot), and Alexander Belyakov (navigator and radio operator)—flew non-stop from Moscow, over the North Pole. After 63 hours of flying, and nearly 6,000 miles, low fuel forced them to land in Vancouver, Washington. Their landing marked the first non-stop flight from Moscow, Russia, to the United States by a single engine plane over the North Pole.
About Oral History
Oral history is a method of gathering and preserving historical information, where the primary emphasis is recorded interviews with participants of past events and ways of life. Generally, the primary audio emphasis is the human voice, a person telling about an historical event or life experience in their own voice.
Oral histories are stories about significant events told by people who experienced those events first hand. Listening to these stories, told in the voices of those who lived them, listeners gain a sense of presence and immediacy. We are there. At the moment when the event happened.
Example Oral Histories
"Hiroshima Survivor"
"My Dad"
"My Dad"
An oral history about an Australian coal miner, John Dudley Roach, produced by his daughter.
"Shirley Howard Oral History"
Shirley Howard recalls working for the Northern Pacific Railroad in Washington State after graduating
from high school.
"Dennis Banks — Ogitchidaw"
A sample from an oral history project by Dennis Banks, Native American activist and founder of the
American Indian Movement.
"Sausage Man"
An oral history from Mödlareuth, Germany, a village famous for being split between East and West Germany
during the Cold War.
Production
Contents
Three oral histories
"Living with Chief Joseph" told by Erskin Wood
"Working the SPS Railroad" told by Harry W. Hendricks
"The Russians Arrive" told by Leverett Richards
Credits
Written, Produced, and Hosted by John F. Barber
Sound Design, Music, and Post Production by Marc Rose
Promotional Graphics by Kathryn Klaus
Producer's Notes
Inspired by the work of Studs Terkel, I've wanted to produce a program about oral history for quite some time. For this first effort I'm fortunate to have access to the Oral History Collection at the Clark County Historical Museum.
All content for this episode is sampled from the Oral History Collection in the Clark County Historical Museum, Vancouver, Washington. Museum director Bradley Richardson says, "This collection is deep and rich with stories, each told in the voices of those who lived the experiences their stories describe. They are true stories. The dialogue is unscripted, unpolished, and absolutely compelling."
Oral histories were originally intended as data gathering practices. Recordings were transcribed and
circulated as printed transcripts. The audio files were shelved as raw data. Given no further attention.
It's satisfying to return to the original verbal sources of these very interesting and insightful
accounts of lives lived by the storytellers.
— John F. Barber
Promotion
Press
