The first story I listened to was titled “Everything was in the name of taking our students to Washington, D.C.”
The title intrigued me, so I tuned in. The story began with some light introductory music and then fades into a narrator speaking. She began to give a small introduction of who the speakers in this clip were and how they met. What I found interesting was that you kind of get the sense that one of the speakers is speaking to the audience and the other one is speaking just to him.
The story was of two teachers, Fernando Hernandez and Moisés Villalpando, they met a long while back at the school they both worked at in San Diego, California. They describe the demographic of many of the students that attended this school as lower class students, some of which were homeless. But these teachers had dreams of their students going to Washington, D.C. one day.
They explained the process of raising enough money to do so, by fundraising and even… wrestling. One of the teachers wrestled a wrestler in order to raise money for the trip. And the way he recalls the story mimicked the shouts and screams the students wailed, like “‘Mr. V, Mr. V, Mr. V!’ It was just electrifying.” With that. They were able to take every single fifth grader at Perkins Elementary to Washington, D.C. They detailed how the group took up about 3/5 of the plane and the ecstatic faces that lit up the windows as every student peered out over the city. Most of these students had never left their neighborhood let alone the state.
The impact was heavy. These students went on to apply to colleges, many of which wrote essays about the time they went to Washington, D.C. in the fifth grade. All because their teacher wrestled someone, and won. The “feel good” story ended with upbeat background music that tied the whole piece together.
The second StoryCorps I listened to was titled “It didn’t matter how much I wanted to protect you, I couldn’t.”
I was interested to see the production of this story versus the previous one as it seemed that this was a more serious story.
It began with a very subtle sounding song, only a cord or two and then goes right into a quick narration of what the readers were to expect with this story.
A young son begins with a question for his mom, “Mom, what is your favorite memory of me?” She begins to tell the story of the time she was driving her car with him in the backseat and crashed head on into another car. They both submerged in an nearby retention pond. The son interjects “I remember… the man swam over to me to help me.” Mom replies back “that’s right.”
When they got to the hospital the son distinctly remembered having “his” orange monkey with him. His mom says that was what the hospital had given him, he was young only two or three at the time. He remembers his mom crying because she thinks that he is bleeding because he has blood all over him. “But it was your blood,” he says.
You can hear mom is crying at this point in the story as she recalls her son wiping some of her blood off with a tissue and she realizes that no matter how hard she tried she has very little control over those things. She reminds her son that if it weren’t for the driver who swam over to save them, they wouldn’t be here today and that even those who hurt us can can still save us after they’ve hurt us.
It then ends with a beautiful soft piano melody that fades off, almost as to remind the listeners like myself to take that lesson with them as well.