Anyone Up for Another Centennial Project?

Over the holidays I have heard some amazing family stories, and I'll bet I'm not alone. In this new age of digital filmmaking, with our remarkably good quality digital videos without much expense, we are at the perfect moment in time to capture the stories of Oklahomans on film. Wouldn't it be cool to have a library of personal histories as part of the new Oklahoma History Center? There are many fascinating details of day to day life as well as recollections of major moments in time that will be lost forever if we don't make a concerted effort to record the memories of our older generation. As an example of a perfect candidate for a digital video interview, one of the docents at the 45th Infantry Division Museum was there for the liberation of Dachau and tells very vivid details about it. As another example, I just heard about a realtor in Norman who was the first realtor to sell a home in Norman to a black family, and who was harassed for doing it. And on a more personal level, my dad was in grade school during World War II and remembers collecting tinfoil to raise money for a bomb, and then he and all of his fellow first-graders signed the bomb before it got sent off to be dropped on Germany. He also remembers being in a sensory deprivation experiment at OU Medical Center that turned out (I found out incidentally through research in college) to be part of the CIA-sponsored mind-control experiments of the 1950s and 1960s. These stories are part of our collective history, and in many ways are more interesting than the stuff typically found in history books. What a terrific opportunity for both aspiring historians and budding documentary film makers.