ShawneeDispatch.com

Shawnee — Shawnee soon will be able to offer its residents another chance to put their history on tape.

Shawnee Town on Monday learned that the Kansas Humanities Council would fully fund its Family Stories project with a $6,800 grant. The project, which will begin next month, will record one-hour interviews with residents who want to share their memories of Shawnee in the first half of the 20th Century.

The intent of the project is to create a community listening post for gathering individual and family stories relevant to having lived, worked or played in the city of Shawnee. It will offer encouragement to families who wish to document their family stories and allow the Shawnee Town museum to learn more about life in Shawnee.

“We are pleased to benefit the public by removing barriers to capturing family stories,” said Gay Clemenson, museum director.

Interviews will be scheduled on eight days, four in November and December and four next year from March through August.

The interviews will be based on the museum’s successful StoryCorps day last June, in which the National Public Radio program recorded several Shawnee residents’ stories, most of them interviewed by a friend or family member.

Clemenson said with multiple days of interviews, and several interviews including two people sharing their memories as they interview each other, the museum expects to capture between 30 and 50 “interview stories” with the likelihood of reaching about 75 individuals.

The project will continue the museum’s efforts of the last six or seven years to capture oral histories on tape. Clemenson said as the museum has conducted research for its 1929 focus, it has gathered histories from several longtime Shawnee residents. She said one method was to ask several residents to gather for a breakfast or coffee.

“When 10 or 12 people are around a table, and one person might start a story of something, and others were chiming in,” Clemenson said. “It was very worthwhile for us to do. It will help us when people are coming to visit the farmstead and the town, it will really enrich their visit.”

From those gatherings, the museum asked some participants back for more focused, in-depth interviews. Families were also interviewed during the ethnic histories project, another project funded by the humanities council.

Linna Place, an adjunct professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, will serve as consultant, and Sandra Reddish, a Ph.D. student at Kansas State University, will serve as interview manager. The Johnson County Museums will support the project by archiving collected interviews. The Dispatch is also a promotions partner in the project.

Like the StoryCorps project, recordings will only be archived with the participants’ consent, but every participant will get a copy of their recording to take home. Also like StoryCorps, while Shawnee Town hopes to learn more about Shawnee in the 1920s and 30s, participants may talk about whatever they want.

“Everybody has a story,” Clemenson said. “I think there’s a rich, rich tapestry of stories that underlie any community; interesting things that people did and remarkable ways that they lived their lives.”

Anyone interested in participating in the project, as well as any volunteers who would like to offer their time to be “hostesses” during interviews at Town Hall, should contact Shawnee Town at (913) 248-2360.

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