A few years ago, Jeri Johnson’s husband Ed was dying. She had one request: Could someone document his life story?
The Legacy Project could.
The brainchild of longtime Westporters Suzanne Sheridan and Rozanne Gates, it’s a chance to do something we always talk about but seldom find time for: document our lives, for our families and all who will follow.
Thanks to his wife’s determination — and the talents of Suzanne and Rozanne — Ed told his life story. His children and grandchildren now have a fuller understanding of how he became the man he was.
Others can learn about him too. The book the Legacy Project USA created — “A Tale of Courage in Red, White, and Blue” — is now in the Weston Library.
Suzanne Sheridan and Rozanne Gates
For more than a decade, the Legacy Project has documented other local residents’ stories too, including Dick Pauker (businessman, sculptor and an original founder of the Westport Arts Center); Colleen Plantinga (mother of Prill Boyle, prominent member of the Westport Garden Club and Saugatuck Congregational Church), and Sally Sellars (whose husband Howard Lathrop designed the new Museum of Contemporary Art).
The Legacy Project offers many options. Life stories can be documented and preserved as audio or video recordings, photo albums or authored biographies.
As many people stuck at home during the coronavirus pandemic now understand, many things we’ve always done in person can now be done by phone, or remotely. That’s true of Legacy Project USA interviews too.
In these self-isolating days, we’re finding time to go through those long-delayed projects. We’re also realizing that when life is precious, documenting our histories becomes more important than ever.
Suddenly, The Legacy Project is at the top of our to-do lists.
(For more information, click here or call 203-222-1441.)
