The importance of history

I have been lecturing and researching for a while and sometimes you take for granted the importance of what your doing. Sunday I decided to attend my childhood church home and it was a wonderful day even though it lasted a whopping three hours. It felt like I never left which has me pondering a return to 2ND Baptist on a weekly basis. Now I attended this church from 1970 or so through 1980 so I grew into a young man and then into a man while there. Yesterday I found myself full of joy and yet nagged with sorrow. As I glanced around the church I kept imagining the faces that were gone. And there were many faces gone, not due to choice, due to death. I have always felt at home with elders in my life a feeling all of my children seem to share with me. I looked at the Deacons, Roselle, Spears and many others were gone. Pastor's wife is in a nursing home. People I remember as kids were now men and women as I am some of them gone in death too. Seeing this made me really understand the value of oral history. That history that Aunt Fannie and Uncle Joe, Grandpa Jim and Grandma Flo have in there heads. People realize this way too late. Once they are gone you cannot get that history back. All the times they babbled those stories in your head, repeated the same one over and over again. Once they pass you may wish you had listened closer and paid better attention. In my family they just don't want to talk about it. My family experienced slavery in Georgia. here I am a slavery researcher with a oral history in my family and I cannot even approach the subject. I am practically begging them to tell me everything and they refuse. So take the time to listen and even write down those stories, that is your heritage and your legacy. You will be glad you did, hey it took me 48 years to understand this.