In this story, Melanie Dunne and sister Marissa Miranda remember Josh Dunne, Melanie’s husband and retired marine who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Josh then struggled for years with a traumatic brain injury and severe PTSD. This story was paced as a memorandum, with a solemn song in the background of the opening and closing comments by the StoryCorp host. They recall Dunne’s life as someone who put his struggles aside to help others. The sound quality of the recording sounds professionally produced, with both Melanie and Marissa in a space of low reverb and background noise. This helps put the focus on the words of Melanie and Marissa to help intrigue the listener to what they were saying. Marissa’s questions helped get Melanie to bring a deeper emotional weight to the story, being someone she loved, her sister, she helped Melanie to open up and tell about her personal struggle as a grieving wife to end the sound bite.
In this story, Ginger Petrocelli and Albert Petrocelli Sr. remember their son, Mark Petrocelli, who died in the attack on 9/11. What is interesting about this story is that Albert Petrocelli died of COVID-19 in April of 2020, the second national tragedy that had affected the Petrocelli family. Before Albert died, they had made this recording for StoryCorp. Albert was a retired fire chief and was on the scene the day of the attack. The police were able to find pieces of Mark, most notably his jaw, and Albert thanked God for returning his smile. The recording sounds homemade, with a buzzing sound of feedback in the background, but this didn’t detract from the emotion of the story, you can still hear Albert’s voice falter as he seems to force back tears remembering his son. The music is a sad song, Albert closes by saying “everyday we miss mark… together we get through it.”