West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Telling West Virginia's Story
Will Laird visited the StoryCorps air stream with his kids, nine-year-old Liam and six-year-old Conrad. The brothers asked Will about his childhood and…
Will Laird visited the StoryCorps air stream with his kids, nine-year-old Liam and six-year-old Conrad. The brothers asked Will about his childhood and the reason their parents pick their names.
You can hear this conversation and more on Tuesday, October 2 at 5:30 p.m. at the Walker Theater in the Clay Center in downtown Charleston.
Nicholas Cochran, 27, and Uneeke Ferguson, 21, are students at Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, West Virginia, where they volunteer at a catholic worker home.
They discussed their childhood experiences with homelessness growing up in inner city Baltimore and Marietta, Ohio, and how volunteering has changed their views on the homeless population.
“I feel jealous sometimes,” Uneeke told Nicholas in the conversation about her experience volunteering at the Hagar House.
“You learn so much by not having so much. You know, the basic necessities that people say that we have to have, it’s a luxury. All of that is a luxury.”
This interview was recorded as part of the American Pilgrimage Project, a partnership of the national nonprofit, StoryCorps, and Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. This story was recorded in Charleston, West Virginia, and was produced by Dan Collison.
The director of the American Pilgrimage Project is Paul Elie. Adelina Lancianese, Anjuli Munjal, Christina Stanton, Gautam Srikishan, and Maura Johnson also contributed to this story.
This month, we’re hearing a series of interviews about religious faith and cultural identity in West Virginia. John Simmons grew up on the West Side of Charleston and is now a pastor in a church there. But a few years ago he heard a calling that would take him and his family to northern Thailand for Christian missionary work for four years. In this interview, John’s wife Lisa asks him to reflect on the family’s time there and what it meant to him and his faith.
“One of the first things they taught us was that outward displays of emotion was frowned upon. That was a culture shock,” John Simmons recalled. “In Thailand, they’re very accepting of people for who they are and what they are. They’re very open to all different faiths and religious practices.”
John’s wife Lisa said the experience also has helped them rethink how they approach missionary work here in West Virginia and in other parts of the United States. “I believe that opportunity in Thailand helped us to be able to coach people in saying, there’s a bigger world out there, and here’s how you learn about people, here’s how you care about them. And then you go and show your faith.”
This interview was recorded as part of the American Pilgrimage Project, a partnership of the national nonprofit, StoryCorps, and Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. This story was recorded in Charleston, West Virginia, and was produced by Beth Vorhees.
The director of the American Pilgrimage Project is Paul Elie. Adelina Lancianese, Anjuli Munjal, Christina Stanton, Gautam Srikishan, and Maura Johnson also contributed to this story.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting and StoryCorps have teamed up for a series of conversations about religious faith told by West Virginians. We'll be…
West Virginia Public Broadcasting and StoryCorps have teamed up for a series of conversations about religious faith told by West Virginians. We’ll be bringing you these conversations over the next few weeks.
In this interview, we hear from a woman who describes her relationship with God as “complicated”. Patience Deweese was interviewed by her 18-year-old daughter Keturah, who was interested in finding out about her mother’s time as a Jehovah’s witness and how her faith has evolved over time.
Patience Deweese now attends the Unitarian Universalist church in Charleston. In this interview, she talks about how a personal tragedy shook her faith.
Her advice to her daughter: “Have an open mind, and be brave.”
This interview was recorded as part of the American Pilgrimage Project, a partnership of the national nonprofit, StoryCorps, and Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. This story was recorded in Charleston, West Virginia, and was produced by Dan Collison.
The director of the American Pilgrimage Project is Paul Elie. Adelina Lancianese, Anjuli Munjal, Christina Stanton, Gautam Srikishan, and Maura Johnson also contributed to this story.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting and StoryCorps have teamed up for a series of conversations about religious faith told by West Virginians. We’ll be bringing you these conversations over the next few weeks. We begin the series with Ronald English and James Patterson. Both men are ministers in Charleston. They also share the experience of challenging racism during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s.
“I remember teachers telling you that you had to be twice as smart and twice as quick as your white counterparts just to make it,” recalled James Patterson, who was born in 1952 in Maxton, North Carolina.
When he was in the 11th grade, his school was integrated. “That’s where we had this proliferation of academies, particularly Christian academies, that were white only. Because there were white people who decided they were not going to send their kids to school with us.”
Ronald English served as assistant to Martin Luther King Jr. at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. “I gave the prayer at his funeral, which was one of the saddest moments of my life.”
In this conversation English and Patterson talk about the connection between black churches and the Civil Rights Movement. “The black church was the bastion of liberation. It was what black folk felt they controlled,” said English.
“And the black preacher was not under the control of the white establishment. And therefore the source of the movement, it’s no accident that it came out of the church and that Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist preacher. And that’s because it was ingrained in the wood of the black church, that it would be about the business of liberating folk.”
Patterson said his work as a minister has been shaped by his experiences of growing up in the deep south, where he experienced racism, and by his belief that religious faith could help bring about social change.
“I believe that we are called, not only to fight what we consider sin, from a theological perspective, but we are called to fight injustice, and we are called to fight inequality, and we are called to fight evil, in whichever way it comes. That’s my calling,” said Patterson.
This interview was recorded as part of the American Pilgrimage Project, a partnership of the national nonprofit, StoryCorps, and Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. This story was recorded in Charleston, West Virginia and was produced by Dan Collison.
The director of the American Pilgrimage Project is Paul Elie. Adelina Lancianese, Anjuli Munjal, Christina Stanton, Gautam Srikishan and Maura Johnson also contributed to this story.
Last year over 50,000 folks sat around the Thanksgiving table and captured some family history. This year encourage your students, friends and family members to do the same.
Leave a “Key” For Future Historians & Students
Recording with the StoryCorps app is about sitting down with someone you care about, asking them a few important questions about the life they have lived, and then listening. Last year, thousands of you and your students participated in The Great Thanksgiving Listen by recording an interview and uploading it to StoryCorps.me and preserving it in the Library of Congress.
The StoryCorps.me website and the archive at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress are both crucial parts of The Great Thanksgiving Listen.
Questions about bringing it to your students: Check out more keyword suggestions on our blog and share your own tips with us on twitter and in the StoryCorps in the Classroom Facebook group.
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SAVE THE DATE: TEACHER WEBINAR A webinar for both new and returning teachers to The Great Thanksgiving Listen. Members of the StoryCorps team will be joined by three educators who used the Teacher Toolkit in their classrooms last year. Bring your questions and join us for the live chat and video broadcast. |
