Dave Isay, founder of the phenomenal StoryCorps oral history project heard on NPR (and on the Web), spoke recently about how the inspiration for StoryCorps came from his dad’s coming out and relating the story of Stonewall.
Isay said:
When I was 22 years old, I was lucky enough to find my calling when I fell into making radio stories at almost the exact same time I found out that my dad who I was very, very close to, was gay. I was taken completely by surprise. We are a very tight-knit family and I was crushed. At some point in one of our strained conversations, my dad mentioned the Stonewall Riots. He told me that one night in 1969, a group of young Black and Latino drag queens fought back against the police at a gay bar in Manhattan called the Stonewall and and how this part the modern gay rights movement.
It was an amazing story and it peaked my interest, so I decided to pick up my tape recorder and find out more. With the help of a young archivist named Michael Shirker, we tracked down all of the people we could find who had been at the Stonewall Inn that night. Recording these interviews, I saw how the microphone gave me the license to go places I otherwise never would have gone and talk to people I might not otherwise ever have spoken to I had the privilege of getting to know someone the most amazing fierce and courageous human beings I had ever met. It was the first time the story of Stonewall had been told to a national audience.
I dedicated the program to my dad it change my relationship with him and it changed my life. Over the next 15 years I made many more radio documentaries, working to shine a light on people who are rarely heard from in the media.
Watch Isay’s talk for yourself. He discusses his dad at the beginning, but then goes on to talk more about the power of stories to transform individual lives—and perhaps even the world.
