Family Stories Connect Us to History

My husband and his brother just published a website about their father, Major Paul Hildreth, mainly focusing on his military history. Major (yes, that really was his first name, not his military rank!) Paul Hildreth was a B-17 bomber pilot in WWII, shot down on July 18, 1944. He and all ten of his crew spent the remaining ten months of the war in a German POW camp; they all returned home. Paul Hildreth returned to his wife, who had been his high school sweetheart, and settled into life in southern Alabama, running the local feed store (among many other entrepreneurial enterprises), and raising two sons. His is a classic American story with a few twists and turns, heroic deeds, romantic adventures, and even some dark secrets. It is an American story told many times over in many different families, with different details, but the same emotional impact.

What is it about these stories, stories about family members that we may never even have met, that mean so much to us? And perhaps more puzzling, why do we care to read about other people’s family members? Why do we find these stories so inspiring?

Robert Heinlein said, “A generation which ignores history has no past—and no future.” History tells us what was and what can be, but it is through the individual stories of those who lived this history that history comes alive, that we understand the human costs and sacrifices. And when we are connected to these stories through family and blood, these stories become a part of our own identity—this is what my family endured; that is who I am.

Like many children and grandchildren, my husband and his brother grew up with stories, both truthful and fantastical, about their father, some stories told by their father, but mostly by aunts and uncles, cousins, and friends, and even by surviving crew members at reunions. My husband, and especially his brother, have collected thousands of documents, texts, letters, drawings, pictures, maps, and so on, that detail a rich and complicated narrative of their father’s wartime experiences. They have put all this together in creating this website. Although public, the intended audience for the website is the family, a now large third generation of grandchildren, nieces and nephews, first and second cousins, living across the U.S. And the family has responded with excitement and gratitude. In the words of one of the grandchildren, “I’m proud to be connected to this history.”

Research from The Family Narratives Lab, which I direct, has amply shown the power of intergenerational narratives. Young people who know stories about their parents and grandparents growing up and coming of age show higher levels of self-esteem, less depression and anxiety, and, perhaps most important, a higher sense of meaning and purpose in life.

Stories from the Greatest Generation hold a special place in both family and national history. Reading through the website about my husband’s father, whom I never had the opportunity to meet in person, I am inspired by his fortitude and courage, heartened by his humility and humanity. I laugh at the humor in his letters and diaries and cry with his pain, both emotional and physical. For his family, Paul Hildreth embodies a moral and purposeful life, a life in which difficulties were met head-on, and joys were embraced with the understanding of the sacrifices that had been made. These stories continue to inform us of what it means to be a good person and what it takes to live a good life.

With the explosion of technology to help us record our family stories, the ability to archive thousands of photos and letters, to record oral histories for posterity, to hold history closer than ever before, let us not forget why this history matters. I know my husband and his brother have become the men they are at least partly due to internalizing the stories of their father. Let us listen to our family stories; in the frenzy to record these histories for posterity, let us not forget why we are doing this. We are not just the sum of our own experiences. As we document the stories of our parents and grandparents for generations to come, we define ourselves, who we are, and who we want to be.