For Your Inspiration: 
In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.
--Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

To forget one’s ancestors is to be a brook without a source; a tree without roots.
--Chinese proverb

Quick Tips:
Be sure to capture the four basics for starting each GreatLifeStory:

• Birth year
• Place of birth
• Birth circumstances
• Parents’ names and occupations
  

In-Depth Questions:

1. What do you know about your ancestors?
2. Where did your family originate?
3. Where were you born?
4. Were you named after anyone?
5. How many children were in your family? Where were you in the lineup?
6. Generally speaking, what was your childhood like?
7. What one or two stories do you remember most clearly about your childhood?
8. What were the one or two key moments in your early days?
9. What are your parents like?
10. What was your home like?
11. How did your family make its living while you were growing up?
12. What is your favorite family memory?
13. What childhood memory still makes you laugh, even today?
14. What toys, games, and activities did you like as a child?
15. What animals and pets are a part of your childhood memories?
16. What were your favorite books?
17. Is there a particular birthday memory that stands out?
18. Are there any heirlooms in your family that have been passed down through generations?
19. What did you learn as a child that has resonated down through the years of your life?
20. How was your childhood different than the way kids grow up today?
21. Create Your In The Beginning Story Chapter Here.

Quick Tips:

• Set the scene: did the interviewee grow up on farm or in the countryside, suburbs, or city?
• Describe both the physical and emotional settings of the neighborhood

In-Depth Questions:

1. Describe where you grew up--farm, suburb, or city
2. Where and how did "news of your neighborhood" usually flow?
3. Who did you hang out with?
4. What were your favorite activities?
5. Who did you look up to, and why?
6. What do you recall about your neighbors?
7. If your family moved, where to, and why?
8. Have you been back to your old neighborhood?
9. How has your old neighborhood changed over the years?
10. Create Your In Your Neighborhood Story Chapter Here.

For Your Inspiration:
The best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.
--Andy Rooney (born: 1919)

If history would be taught in the form of stories it would not be forgotten.
--Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

We know that all books burn, yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can abolish memory.
--Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945)

Quick Tips:
Be sure to collect the school names, dates locations for:

• Grade school
• High school
• College, trade, technical or professional schools
• Graduations, awards, honors

In-Depth Questions:

1. What are your earliest school day memories?
2. What were your best and worst subjects?
3. What did you learn in those first years of school that you would like to pass along to the next generation?
4. Tell me about your high school and college years
5. Were you involved in sports, music, drama, or other extra-curricular activities?
6. Describe the first classroom that you remember.
7. What schools did you attend?
8. Describe your school’s buildings
9. Who were some of your favorite teachers, coaches or mentors and why?
10. Are there school accomplishments that you are particularly proud of?
11. Generally speaking, how did you feel about school?
12. What music food, clothing was cool when you were in school?
13. While in school, what were your career aspirations?
14. Share any funny, happy, or poignant moments from your school days
15. How have schools and schooling changed since you graduated?
16. What would you tell young students today?
17. Create Your School Days Story Chapter Here.

For Your Inspiration:
Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.
--Theodore Roosevelt

The work praises the man.
--Irish proverb

 There was never yet an uninteresting life.  Such a thing is impossibility.  Inside the dullest exterior, there is a drama, a comedy, a tragedy.
--Mark Twain (1835-1910)

 Quick Tips:
Along with birth, schooling, marriage, and family, work is often one of life’s defining experiences.  Be sure to capture:

• Job highlights
• Career lowlights, too.
• Job changes
• Pivotal bosses, co-workers, customers, etc

 In-Depth Questions:

1. What did you want to be when you grew up?
2. What was your first job, and how did you get it?
3. How much were you paid?
4. What was your first boss like? What did you learn from him or her?
5. Did you leave? Quit? Get promoted? Get fired?
6. Were you ever out of work for a long time? If so, how did you handle it?
7. Did you ever change jobs or careers?
8. What is or was the most satisfying, fulfilling part of your work?
9. Did you ever have work that you disliked?
10. Did you have any work experiences that changed your life? What were they?
11. How has work changed since you entered the workforce?
12. What career advice do you have for young people just entering the workforce?
13. Create Your Off to Work Story Chapter Here.

For Your Inspiration:
All you need is love.
- John Lennon & Paul McCartney

All I really need is love, but a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt!
- Lucy Van Pelt (in Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz)

For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart.  It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.
- Judy Garland, American Actress

Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be.
- Robert Browning, English Poet

Quick Tips:
Romance and marriage is the basis for all families, everywhere, for all time.  Be sure to ask about:

• Romantic traditions, especially if parents or grandparents are from the old country
• How did mom meet dad
• Stories about dating, engagement and the wedding(s)

In-Depth Questions:

1. What do you recall about your first date?
2. How did you first meet this person who is now such a part of your life?
3. What did you think the very first time that you saw, spoke with, or met your special person?
4. What do you remember about the first time you kissed?
5. What factors or attributes do you think sparked the connection that you share?
6. Who was first to speak about considering a commitment?
7. Describe the moment you and your partner decided to commit as a couple.
8. How did you know you were really in love?
9. Tell me how you "popped the question," or how it was popped to you.
10. What gifts or tokens of romance were parts of your decision to make a life commitment?
11. Which friends did you choose to stand with you as you and your partner shared your vows?
12. What made you choose the place where you planned to celebrate your wedding or commitment?
13. What are some of your earliest memories with your partner?
14. Create Your Romance & Marriage Story Chapter Here.

For Your Inspiration:
“Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.”
-- Ovid, Roman Philosopher (BC 43—AD 18)

“Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure.”
-- Benjamin Franklin, American Statesman and Inventor, (1706-1790)

“How You Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm after they’ve Seen Paree?”
-- Sam M. Lewis, American Songwriter, (1885-1959)

Quick Tips:

• “Are we there yet?”  Family vacation stories are sometimes tragi-comedies!  Plus, vacation photos are often some of the most memorable.  Collect the stories and pictures that really matter.
• Passion!  Many people love their hobbies, sports, music, athletics or other activities.  How we spend precious spare time speaks volumes about you or your family member.

In-Depth Questions:

1. What do you recall of early family trips and vacations?
2. What are your favorite vacations or trips?
3. Are you a reluctant traveler, enthusiastic, or somewhere in the middle?
4. Have you ever taken a "dream" vacation, and if so, how did it turn out?
5. Has travel ever changed your life?
6. Have you met people while traveling that have become great friends?
7. Have you discovered great new foods, clothing, furniture, artwork, gifts or other items in your travels?
8. What are you top leisure time activities?
9. How did you develop your leisure interests?
10. Describe a great day doing your favorite leisure activity
11. Do you belong to any clubs or associations of people with similar interests?
12. Did you have pets while growing up?
13. If so, what kinds?
14. How did your pets come into your life? Gifts? Strays? Adoptions?
15. What were the names of your pets?
16. What stories about your pets do you remember the best?
17. Do you have a pet or pets today?
18. How have your pets added to your life?
19. Create Your Leisure, Travel, Pet Story Chapter Here.

For Your Inspiration: 
Storytelling is fundamental to the human search for meaning.
--Mary Catherine Bateson

The foundations of a person are not in matter but in spirit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience.  You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.
--Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, (1881-1955)

Quick Tips:

• Delving into one’s spiritual journey often yields amazing and sometimes unexpected stories

 Six In-Depth Questions:

1. Did your family follow any religious tradition?
2. Do you follow a tradition today?
3. If so which one, and what is it like?
4. How active are you?
5. Have you ever changed faiths?
6. What made you take this step?
7. What role do your beliefs play in your life today?
8. What would you tell your children about your faith?
9. Create Your Places of Worship Story Chapter Here.

For Your Inspiration:
Never doubt that you can change history.  You already have.
--Marge Piercy (born: 1936)

I have known war as few men now living know it.  Its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.
--General Douglas MacArthur “(1880-1964)

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind. War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.
--John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

Quick Tips:

• Asking war veterans about their experiences is often a great way to get reluctant guys to talk about themselves
• Those who weren’t in active duty often have unique wartime experiences.  For example, during WWII, “Rosie the Riveter” took jobs often occupied by men, such as building planes and other armaments.

In-Depth Questions:

1. Were you a volunteer, or were you drafted?
2. Where did you do your basic training?
3. What do you recall about being on the home front during the war?
4. Which branch did you serve, and for how long?
5. What key moments do you recall about your service?
6. What would you tell today’s young soldiers, sailors and fliers?
7. Create Your War & Peace Story Chapter Here.

For Your Inspiration:
All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.
--Isaak Dinesen

Knowing our past, we shall find strength and wisdom to meet the present.
--Gertrude Weil (1879-1971)

Character develops itself in the stream of life. 
--Goethe (1749-1832)

Quick Tips:
Ask about triumphs and tragedies in each key area:

• Family
• Marriage
• Career
• Business
• Sports

In-Depth Questions:

1. What were the most joyous, fulfilling times of your life?
2. Any sad, tragic or difficult times you’d care to share such as losing a loved one, a job, or something you cared about?
3. How did you face these tough times?
4. What lifelong lessons did you learn from these tough times? Joyous times?
5. Were there any moments you recall as true breakthroughs in any area of your life?
6. If you could do one thing differently in your life, what would that be?
7. Create Your Triumph & Tragedy Story Chapter Here.

For Your Inspiration:
Don't be discouraged if your children reject your advice.  Years later they will offer it to their own offspring.
--Unknown

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.
--Plato, Greek Philosopher (BC 427?-347?)

When you teach your son, you teach your son's son.
--BC 500?-400? AD, Talmud, Jewish Archive of Oral Tradition 

Quick Tips:

• People will sometimes repeat aphorisms such as “honesty is the best policy.”  If they do, be sure to ask how they learned that life lesson.

In-Depth Questions:

1. What have you learned over your lifetime that you’d like to share with the younger generation?
2. How did you learn those lessons?
3. Create Your Words of Wisdom Story Chapter Here.

For Your Inspiration:
Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive.
--Stella Benson (1892-1933, British Actor)

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.
--Victor Borge (born 1909)

People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, British Poet

Quick Tips:

• Humorous stories often pop up almost unexpectedly.  Listen carefully and be sure to fully capture the characters in each humorous family anecdote.
• Be sure to recall tone of voice, hand gestures, eyes rolling—those colorful details make the story complete

In-Depth Questions:

1. What funny stories do you recall from school, work military service or relationships?
2. What were your family’s favorite jokes or pranks?
3. Who is, or was, the family comedian?
4. Who was usually the family "straight man?"
5. What’s the funniest family joke you remember?
6. Create Your Funnybones Story Chapter Here.

For Your Inspiration:
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.  Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
--Melody Beatty, American Actress

If the only prayer you say in your life is thank you, that would suffice.
--Meister Eckhardt

All I am, or can be, I owe to my angel mother.
--Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.
-- Cicero, Great Roman Orator (c. 106-43 BC)

Quick Tips:

• Let the words flow straight from your heart; resist the temptation to edit yourself

In-Depth Questions:

1. What are you most grateful for you your life?
2. How do you express your gratitude?
3. Any special events that marked a meaningful moment in your life?
4. How have you taught your children to be grateful?
5. Are there items or places that mark special gratitude for the ones you love? What are they? What are their stories?
6. Create Your Thank You Story Chapter Here.