Rememberize Newsletter, February 2020
Return To RootsTech
RootsTech 2020
RootsTech is back in Salt Lake City, February 26-29, at the Salt Palace. It’s the 10-year anniversary of this major family history conference. Rememberize will be in the Expo Hall beginning Wednesday night, with our latest projects on display. We hope to see you all there to discuss ideas for preserving, archiving, and curating your memories, because your stories matter.
We’ll be unveiling a few new offerings from Rememberize, including oral history assistance, and one-on-one coaching to help you with your own personal history writing. You can also check out samples of our photobiographies and children’s books. We look forward to hearing what you’re doing with your own history projects, and discussing ways we might be able to assist.
We Can Scan
Rememberize has acquired We Can Scan to take our business to new heights. We professionally scan your photos, slides, negatives, and documents so you can enjoy and share your life memories. It’s a great fit for us as we look to help our customers Rememberize.
Recent Rememberize Projects
Mama and the Indians
John Boice and Mary Ann Barzee migrated to Utah in 1846 and settled on the Camas Prairie, about 40 miles east of Salt Lake City. Before their call to settle that area, they adopted an Indian girl, and when they encountered some difficulties with the Indians, the situation was defused when their adopted daughter’s father happened to be among the Indians on whose hunting grounds the settlers were encroaching.
We met LaShon Evans at our Rememberize booth at Provo Freedom Days. This story comes from her family’s history and she wanted to find a unique way to share it. We enjoyed working with LaShon as she wrote the text for a children’s book, told from the perspective of John and Mary Ann’s son, Martin. “Mama and the Indians” turned into a great project for that family, with help from Daisy Jeffords, who provided some amazing illustrations that really enhance the storytelling experience.
Because LaShon wrote her own text and provided her own illustrator, the costs of the project were minimized. Rememberize has the ability to help with writing and illustrations, but we love working with you where you are. In this case, the children’s book was a great family project for LaShon, and the finished product made a fantastic Christmas gift.
I Am Indeed Blessed
The Hale family was driving from Las Vegas, Nevada to Hurricane, Utah on Saturday, January 23, 1960. The family often made that road trip, but this time things took a tragic turn when an auto accident claimed the lives of a mother, father, and three young girls. Three brothers survived the accident. The story of the impact on this family is captured in our latest Rememberize Stories of Life mini-book, written by Chelsey Hale Burnah, the daughter of one of the surviving young boys.
Chelsey wrote the story, and we helped her design and print it. The 20-page book was a gift for the Hale family, a great way to Rememberize an event that shaped so many lives in this family.
Gordon and Marian Jensen: A Memoir
The life stories of Gordon Jensen and Marian Wilkinson Jensen made for a great project for their three daughters, and a fantastic coffee-table quality printed book that will bless the lives of friends and family for generations. We enjoyed helping turn these stories into a 168-page photobiography, with the family providing the written content, complemented by editing, design and printing from our team at Rememberize.
Marian is the daughter of Ernest L. and Alice Ludlow Wilkinson, so the story begins with some details about their lives, as well as the lives of George Fred and Verna Farr Jensen, but the focus is on the experiences of Gordon and Marian, with excerpts from their own writings and the recollections of their three daughters.
In addition to text, this photobiography is filled with QR-code links to two dozen audio and video recordings collected from different times in their lives. Family members have their words in print, and their voices on tape to bring their stories to life. The project was a labor of love for our Rememberize staff. We first met Allyson Egbert, one of Gordon and Marian’s daughters, at RootsTech 2019, and this project began a few months later. The finished product is one of our favorite books so far.
Merrill Missions
Richard and Sandra Merrill were high school sweethearts in Idaho, and after a career in the United States Air Force, the Merrills served five missions for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to four different temples—Madrid Spain (twice), Nauvoo Illinois, Cochabamba Bolivia, and Helsinki Finland. Our most recent photobiography captures stories from those five missions and tells of their faith and service.
Notable in the book is a story about the Repo family. When Dick was a young missionary in Finland, he taught a young couple one time before they returned to their home in an area in which he was not assigned. When he and Sandy returned to Finland years later as temple missionaries, they reconnected with the Repo family and found that from that couple had come a legacy of faith and missionary service that continued through the generations to this day.
We loved producing this book for the Merrill family, allowing them to share this and other experiences with their loved ones.
We would love to help you Rememberize and share your experiences in books of your own. As these examples indicate, we love to work with people where they are and help them get to the finish line with their personal and family history projects. Write it yourself or have us do the writing for you, either way works. We can help with graphic design and printing, or we can provide coaching to help you as you do it yourself.
Quarterly DIY Tip
The things of my soul.
What should you include in your stories as you record your personal history? That’s entirely up to you. One thing to keep in mind is the incredible value you are providing to the generations that will follow you and read your stories. It’s great to record stories, but think about what would be of value to you if you were the reader. What do you want your grandchildren to know? How did the experiences in the story impact your life? When we record the things of our soul in our stories, the impact won’t just educate, but will inspire those who read about our lives.