Short, useful pieces on capturing a life: the questions to ask, the mistakes to skip, and a little local history worth remembering.
Remento, StoryWorth, and hiring a personal historian all help you capture a loved one’s life story, but they suit very different families. StoryWorth emails …
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Howie Dorough, the Backstreet Boy known to millions of fans as Howie D, didn’t grow up on the Space Coast. He grew up in Orlando, where the Backstreet Boys …
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Winston Scott is a retired NASA astronaut and U.S. Navy captain who flew two Space Shuttle missions, walked in space three times, and has spent the last two decades …
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To protect your family photos and important documents during hurricane season, digitize them first so a copy survives no matter what happens to the originals, store …
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To preserve your family recipes, gather them from every source you can find, record the cooks who never wrote anything down, and save both the recipe and its story …
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Published July 13, 2026 To write your own life story, you don’t need to be a writer. Start by breaking your life into chapters or themes, write about one …
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Published July 13, 2026 To preserve old home movies, VHS tapes, film reels, and slides, digitize them as soon as possible, because these formats degrade over time …
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To start researching your family tree, begin with what you already know, write down names, dates, and places for yourself and your closest relatives, then work …
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Florida’s Space Coast has produced a surprising number of famous people, including rock legend Jim Morrison (born in Melbourne), surfing’s greatest …
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Published July 11, 2026 · Updated July 11, 2026 Yes, Jim Morrison was born in Melbourne, Florida, on December 8, 1943. The legendary frontman of The Doors began his …
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To make a family history book, gather your family’s stories and photos, choose a structure (usually by generation, by person, or in time order), write the …
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The best StoryWorth alternative depends on how your loved one likes to communicate. StoryWorth emails weekly questions that your parent answers in writing, then …
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Published July 10, 2026 · Updated July 10, 2026 Kelly Slater, widely called the greatest surfer of all time, grew up in Cocoa Beach, Florida, and started surfing its …
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Published July 9, 2026 · Updated July 9, 2026 The only woman in the Apollo 11 firing room at liftoff was JoAnn Morgan, an instrumentation controller for NASA who …
Read the articleThe best questions to ask your grandparents are the open ones, the kind that ask for a story instead of a yes or a no. Start with their childhood, then move to work, …
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Published July 8, 2026 · Updated July 8, 2026 Before she was a Sports Illustrated cover model, Kate Upton was a champion horseback rider growing up in Melbourne, …
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AI can genuinely help write a family memoir, but it can’t do the whole job well on its own. It’s excellent at transcribing interviews, organizing …
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The best questions to ask a veteran are open ones that let them share at their own pace, covering why they joined, their training, the people they served with, daily …
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Published July 7, 2026 · Updated July 7, 2026 Carrot Top, the red-haired prop comedian, was born in Rockledge, Florida, in 1965 and grew up in nearby Cocoa as the …
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Published July 6, 2026 · Updated July 6, 2026 Comedian Daniel Tosh, best known for the show Tosh.0, grew up in Titusville, Florida, on the Space Coast. Born to …
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These 100 life story and oral history interview questions help you capture anyone’s memories, organized into ten themes from early childhood to final …
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Published July 5, 2026 · Updated July 5, 2026 Before the legendary 1984 Hail Mary and the Heisman Trophy, Doug Flutie spent much of his boyhood in Melbourne Beach, …
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To record your parent’s life story, start now, with a phone and a plan. Sit down for short, regular conversations, ask open questions about their childhood and …
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To choose a personal historian, look at their sample work, ask how they conduct interviews and preserve a person’s voice, understand exactly what’s …
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Published July 4, 2026 · Updated July 4, 2026 Darrell Hammond, one of the longest-serving cast members in Saturday Night Live history, was born and raised in …
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Published July 3, 2026 · Updated July 3, 2026 Zora Neale Hurston was a Florida writer, anthropologist, and folklorist who grew up in Eatonville, one of the first …
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The best questions to ask someone who worked at NASA or Kennedy Space Center focus on their specific job, the missions they were part of, what launch days felt like …
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To write a eulogy that sounds like the person, gather specific stories and their own sayings, choose two or three qualities that captured who they were, and tell …
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Published July 2, 2026 · Updated July 2, 2026 Bob Ross, the gentle painter behind The Joy of Painting and its “happy little trees,” was born in Daytona …
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The Space Coast changed faster than almost anywhere in the country, and the people who remember it before the rockets are the ones worth recording now. Preserving …
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Published July 1, 2026 · Updated July 1, 2026 Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Tom Petty was born and raised in Gainesville, Florida, where a chance meeting with Elvis …
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When time is short, focus on capturing a loved one’s voice and the few stories that matter most to them, not a complete life history. Keep sessions brief and …
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Published June 30, 2026 · Updated June 30, 2026 Mary McLeod Bethune was an educator and civil rights leader who founded a school in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1904 …
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Published June 29, 2026 · Updated June 29, 2026 Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Yearling, who moved to the tiny settlement of …
Read the articleA legacy letter, also called an ethical will, is a personal message that passes on your values, life lessons, blessings, and hopes to the people you love. Unlike a …
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When sorting a loved one’s letters, journals, and belongings, go slowly and resist discarding anything meaningful in the early rush of grief. Set aside the …
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Hiring someone to write a family memoir usually ranges from a few hundred dollars for a short, recorded-and-transcribed project to several thousand for a full, …
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A celebration of life is a personal, often less formal gathering that honors who someone truly was. Meaningful ideas include building a memory table of their …
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We named this stretch of Florida coast after the thing that made it famous: the rockets. But the land had a long life before the launch pads, and a lot of it still …
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A legacy book is a printed keepsake that captures a person’s life story in their own words, usually built from recorded interviews, photographs, and family …
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A storytelling workshop brings older adults together to share and preserve memories in a warm, guided group setting. On the Space Coast, I lead these sessions at …
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To organize old family photos, gather them all in one place, sort them into rough groups by era or family line, digitize them by scanning or photographing, and label …
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The best questions to ask your aging parents are open ones about their childhood, how they became who they are, your family’s history, and what they’ve …
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A memoir is a first-person story about part of a person’s life, usually written by them. An autobiography is a first-person account of their whole life, also …
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A dementia or Alzheimer’s diagnosis doesn’t mean your loved one’s stories are already gone. Long-term memories, the childhood ones, the deep ones, …
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A legacy book comes together in five stages: the conversations, the recording and transcription, the writing and shaping, the design with photographs, and the …
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A personal historian is a professional who preserves people’s life stories, usually by interviewing them and shaping those conversations into a book, an audio …
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To interview an elderly relative without it feeling like an interview, keep it a relaxed conversation instead of a question-and-answer session. Pick a comfortable …
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The best gift for a parent or grandparent who has everything is their own life story, captured and kept. Instead of one more thing to dust, you give them the …
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A tribute book is a printed keepsake that gathers a loved one’s life story, their photographs, and the memories of the people who knew them, created after …
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