Jerry, my Dad in his retirement years (and even a little before) got in the habit of dragging a cheap little tape recorder along on visits to his fellow old-timers. Apparently it started when he was being debriefed on the history of the spot where he grew up, and it dawned on him that a lot of stuff was getting lost.

So he would visit people in his travels and say he was working on the family geneaology (which he didn't really do in a formal way) and got them talking. He also grabbed some tape from visits on a trip to the old country, and some relatives singing some old songs, and just some family gatherings.

They were an undocumented mess, but as a result of this fairly odd habit, we now have a record of HIS voice as well as all these other people (he would often have to tell 2 stories to get his subject to give up 1), and of course that and the snippet's of Mom's voice are now priceless. Ironically, for his last several years his voice was gone due to laryngectomy, so it was doubly blessed that he did this gift before he lost the chance.

Years ago, I took the 30+ cassettes, plus some stuff of Granddad & other relatives singing old songs, and spliced together coherent samples so the family could have 90 minutes of assorted voices, songs and stories. I listened to it the other day for the first time in a long time. Time to migrate that stuff to digital before the tapes get creaky, and to take his little suitcase of raw material and see how much of it will transfer (I shudder to think of the stick-shed syndrome that has probably taken over some of them).

Anyway, I'm so glad you are doing this for your family Jerry, and make sure a junior family member knows how to get into your stash and make sense of it (or just save priceless letters from the garage sale) whenever you pass on. Actually, for anybody else who is thinking about this: one good methodology to make sure it's not this big growing heap of stuff that never sees the light of day: pick an annual project (scrapbook, collected letters, family tree, autobio, photo CD, audio CD, whatever) and try to finish it in time to give copies to relatives in lieu of clutter-gifts. It gives you a deadline and impetus to finish one chunk at a time. Then start on the next chunk.

Which reminds me, this years project was supposed to be a disc with an audio and a transcript of a distant relative telling us bloodcurdling tales of early family history.   Don't think I can make the deadline, but I better see if I can try. Time to shut my mouth and do it!!!