Generations

Growing up, I loved hearing the stories my grandpa would tell me about flying over China in World War II, and how he had his broken arm set on the coffee table, that now sits in my mother's living room, when he was a little boy, back when the table was his mother's dining room table. I relished the stories my grandmother told me about her father being sent over from Europe by himself when he was just a little boy, and what life was like growing up during the Great Depression. I remember a story she told me about her mother giving her just enough money to buy a chocolate candy shaped like a bird, and how all the way home she wanted to bite the head off but didn't because she knew once it was gone, that was it.

For years, my family and I begged my grandparents to write their stories so they would be around for us to read in years to come and pass on to their great-grandchildren. But they still haven't gotten around to it. At least, not as far as writing an actual autobiography that will be with us forever. But now, thanks to today's technology and my cousin's brilliant mind, their story is going to be with us forever.

My cousin, Michael Nanus, and his wife, Debbie, have created their own company, Generations Video Inc., in Orlando, Florida. They create DVDs with people's stories that include interviews, pictures, news clips from the events taking place during their lives and anything else they can imagine to include in this new form of biographies.

Mike and Debbie's inspiration for creating Generation's Video Inc. was the desire to have their grandparents' stories captured forever in a way that would allow future generations to know them.

"Personally, for me, I couldn't imagine another year going by without some of my family's stories being recorded," said Debbie.

Debbie was raised by her grandparents and heard first-hand stories from them all of her life.

"I wanted to make sure my grandmother got to tell her story in her words, in her voice," she added. She said pictures in a scrapbook are not the same. "I wanted there to be life in it."