Roots

I’ve always know that I am very lucky to have four grandparents still living, and living in the Pittsburgh area.   My paternal grandmother is from Pittsburgh, my maternal grandmother is from St. Louis, and both of my grandfathers are from Greece.  They all have incredibly interesting and different stories of growing up in their hometowns and how their lives have changed over the last 80-plus years.  So over Thanksgiving break, I decided that I was going to put my broadcast journalism skills to good use and interview my grandparents to have their stories on record.

I have to admit that I did lie and tell them I was doing this for a school project, when in reality, I am doing this to have a video recording of some of their stories while I still have the chance to actually interview them.  It was initially somewhat of a challenge to get them to warm up and forget about the camera.  I’m normally pretty good at putting people to ease and making them forget about the camera, but for some reason it was more difficult to do with my grandparents.  However, once they all got started talking, they didn’t stop.

A lot of the stories I had heard before: such as feeding German soldiers in Greece during WWII, growing up Greek-Orthodox in the midwestern town of St. Louis, helping Greek guerrilla fighters blow up a train station in the mountains of Greece, and Pittsburgh when it was truly a steel mill town.  Regardless of the location or the craziness of the story, every story made an impact on me and helped me peek inside the lives of my grandparents before I knew them.  I am so happy that I have their stories recorded and saved, because not only are they part of my family roots, but they have experienced history and their first-person stories are incredible.