Sharing stories
“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
Lillian Bloodworth, 92, has donated 23 gallons of blood over nearly five decades, starting in the 1960s. “Bloodworth” really is her last name, though donors would often ask her if it was a gimmick for the blood bank.
She came to StoryCorps in Florida with her husband, John Bloodworth, to remember a life spent giving back.
If you’ve ever visited Fells Point on the Baltimore waterfront, you may have noticed an older man with a telescope.
His name is Herman Heyn, the city’s street corner astronomer.
For decades he’s set up in the same spot, inviting passers-by to peer through his telescope.
At StoryCorps, Herman (left) sat down with his nephew, John (right), to remember how he became a self-proclaimed “star hustler.”
Eddie Chang had just finished his junior year in college and was spending some time at his friend’s house in Chicago, when he got reacquainted with his friend’s older sister, E.F. Wen.
Two years older than him, E.F. happened to be home for the summer. She was always the well-liked one around the community, and her playful, rebellious energy caught his eye.
What happened that week sparked a romance that would last them four decades — until E.F. died after a battle with colon cancer.
Eddie came to StoryCorps with their youngest daughter Tria to remember how it all started, and recount all that he still loves about his late wife.
The Wisdom of the Aged
In New York City, the population age 85 and up has been growing at five times the rate for the city as a whole, doubling since 1980 to about 150,000. For this often invisible population, the first of its size, what does an older life really look like? And can it be better?
Throughout the year, the six talked unflinchingly about death and loss, but also about love and connection, about accomplishment and meaning. A paradox of old age is that older people have a greater sense of well-being than younger ones — not because they’re unreservedly blissful, but because they accept a mixture of happiness and sadness in their lives, and leverage this mixture when events come their way. They waste less time on anger, stress and worry. As Ping Wong, 90, put it: “When you’re young, the future is so far away, and you don’t know what will happen to you and the world. So when you’re young, you have more worries than the elderly. But I don’t worry now.”