StoryCorps

A Gift Of Life And Friendship After A Family's Loss

Fri, 17 May 2013 07:06:00 +0000

Today, Rick Bounds is a 58-year-old triathlete, with four competitions and a 100-mile bike ride to his credit.

But six years ago, he was diagnosed with a nonhepatitis liver disease. Rick's doctors told him that if he didn't have an immediate kidney and liver transplant, he would die.

He was given eight months to live and told that his chances of getting organs were slim.

'No Hope'

"I woke up my husband. I said, 'Baby, you've got to get up,' " says 50-year-old Dorothy Biernack. "He had a construction company.

Preserving The Motherhood Advice And Memories Of A Mom

NPR Staff — Fri, 10 May 2013 02:03:00 +0000

In 2008, Rebecca Posamentier visited StoryCorps with her mother, Carol Kirsch.

"My mom was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's, and I was hoping to get her voice and her thoughts on tape before she couldn't express them anymore," Posamentier said recently during a second visit to StoryCorps.

Kirsch died in March 2011, but during that first visit, Posamentier chatted with her mother about well, motherhood.

"Um, Mom was very insecure, because she had polio as a child, and she had a limp for pretty much all her life," Kirsch said about her own mother.

After Years Of Hiding, 'Walking In Love' As Transgender

Fri, 03 May 2013 07:23:00 +0000

Growing up in a rough housing project on Chicago's South Side during the early 1960s, Alexis Martinez had to hide that she was transgender.

Back then, her name was Arthur, Alexis tells her daughter, Lesley Etherly Martinez, on a visit to StoryCorps in Chicago.

"When I came out to my mom that I was transgender, I think I was 13 or 14," Alexis says. "And she called the police.

From Poor Beginnings To A Wealth Of Knowledge

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:45:00 +0000

Herman Blake grew up with his mother and six siblings just outside New York City. It was the early 1940s and the family was poor.

Losing A Leg, But Gaining A Sense Of Purpose

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 06:46:00 +0000

In 1987, Jack Richmond was driving a forklift at work when the vehicle overturned onto him, crushing his leg below the knee. His daughter, Reagan, was just 2 months old at the time.

"Initially when they told me I would lose my leg, I was in denial and disbelief and kind of like, 'What, why? Can't you fix it?' " Jack tells Reagan in a visit to StoryCorps in Knoxville, Tenn. "But it just couldn't be saved."

"And you had a brand new daughter — me," says Reagan, now 25. "What were you thinking?"

"I thought about you a lot," Jack says.