ADULTS- If you could ask someone you cared about (who has passed on) any questions- what would they be?

Question

My American Studies teacher-who lost both of her parents at a young age- has assigned us a project where we are to interview a parent or grandparent on videotape so that we can learn more about them and about their lives.

She asked us to think of 30 questions and 15 follow ups, but im just asking for a few that leap to mind. Preferably general questions about things you never thought were important but you now realize you wish you knew.

She specifically said " Ask open-ended (essay type) questions. Avoid questions that have YES or NO answers. Be sure to ask about their feelings, attitudes, reactions, perceptions, views, etc."

Finally she wants us to tie it in with a timeline of major events that happened in their lives (the person im interviewing is a little over 50 and jewish) so if you think there are good questions on reactions towards any major events- those would be great too.

Thanks so much for your time - one day these questions and answers will hopefully carry...

Answer 1

I'd ask each of my grandparents to tell me about their childhood. Schooling. Transportation at the time. (I'm in my 50's so they were all born in the late 1890's and early 1900's.)  I asked about leisure time.

Their siblings, aunts, uncles, and their grandparents.

First time driving a car. First time on a time. First time flying.

For someone in their 50's and Jewish I would ask about the establishment of the Jewish state. Has this person been to Israel? Has she/he ever lived or wanted to live on a kibbutz?  Favorite Jewish holiday?  Favorite food?  Did he/she know anyone who served/died in Vietnam?  What is the first person he/she can remember being President?  I remember Eisenhauer vaguely, but I vividly remember Kennedy being shot!  Does this person have a favorite book?  movie?  Is she/he an orthodox, reformed, or conservative Jew and why?  Does this person have a favorite relative from when he/she was a child?

Answer 2

Childhood and School Days

Where and when were you born? In a hospital? At home? In a taxi cab? (I remember my parents telling me that my twin and I were a week overdue, so Dad took mom for a car ride on a bumpy road.)

Where and when did you go to school (elementary, high school, college, trade school, graduate school) What were your favorite subjects? Why? Who were your favorite teachers? Why?

What were your favorite hobbies, sports, amusements, youth groups (Scouts, 4-H, etc.) as a child, teenager, young adult?

What would a typical school day, Saturday, Sunday have been like as a child, teenager, young adult? Chores, for instance, have changed a lot since children had to fetch water, chop kindling and hold a leg while Dad butchered the elk. I know a man whose teenager has to delete all the temporary files from the family's computers once a week, since his younger children "draw" a lot but aren't trusted with the file manager.

If you had an after school or summer job, what did you do? What did you like about it? Dislike about it? What was the funniest thing that happened on the job? How much did you earn? What would that buy in terms of candy bars, movie tickets, toys, or other things you were likely to buy at that age?

Where did you live as a child, teenager, young adult? What was the house like? What was the town like? What do you remember liking and disliking about it? As an adult, why did you pick the places you picked to live (Specific apartments, neighborhoods, cities, regions)?

What was the most exciting thing that happened to you as a child, teenager, young adult? Or, what were the three most, five most, seven most exciting things?



Romance, Work, Play and History

How did you and your spouse meet? What attracted you to each other? Do you have a favorite incident from your courtship that was either funny in the ordinary way or embarrassing then, funny now? (My cousin told me that when his parents, Bill and Dorothy, were courting, they often played tennis. Dorothy would make tuna sandwiches. After they were married Bill told Dorothy he hated tuna fish sandwiches; he just ate them to please her.)

What was your wedding like? Where and when was it held? Was this typical for the time? (Not everyone gets married while skydiving.) Did you dance? What did people wear? (Those of you who changed out of a rented tuxedo into a powder blue polyester leisure suit for the reception will want to skip this one.)

Military service - When and where did you serve? Why did you choose it, if you had a choice? What was the most exciting thing that happened to you in the service? Funniest? Most frightening? This particular section can get intense if you are interviewing a Vietnam vet. Try to be sensitive. If your subject is willing, ask about his reactions to the furor at home while he was fighting. There will probably not be many funny anecdotes here, no matter what war they fought in.

Occupation - what did you do? Why did you choose it as a career? What did you especially like and dislike about the job(s)? What are some of the things your are proudest of? How much did you make to start with at your first full-time job? How much was that in terms of a "starter" home, or a good second-hand car? (Inflation being what it is, most of us started working at wages that seem ridiculously low now. Asking how much a car, house or whatever cost back then balances it out. I only earned $2,000 a year at a variety of part time and summer jobs while I was in college, but it was enough to cover room, board, tuition, books and living expenses.)

What did you do outside of your job as an adult? Why do you do it? What did you like or dislike about it? Funny, proud, sad events? Not just volunteer work, but hobbies, recreation, travel, and so on. Do you bird watch, water ski, play the banjo, teach Sunday school, volunteer at the library, fly fish, collect stamps, refinish antiques, rebuild hot rods?

What historical events have you witnessed in person? Via radio or television? How did you and your friends and neighbors react to them?



Religion, Children, History again

Religion - Why did you choose your particular denomination, if you did? What do you like about it? Dislike? What was the funniest thing that ever happened to you in church? What was the most awe-inspiring thing? What was your proudest moment? What was your saddest moment? What was the top church event in that elusive class, "Things that were horribly embarrassing then but funny now that a few years have passed"?

Children - where and when were they born? How did you pick their names? What were they like as infants and toddlers? Most of the questions above are as open and optional as I could phrase them, but parents doing this have to come up with at least two anecdotes about each child, for the grandchildren to chuckle over.

Larger events, personal perspective - what do you notice is the biggest (three biggest, five biggest) change in the world today from the world you knew as a child? What one, three, five things can you remember being invented in your life which people today take for granted?

(The first time ever I saw a television set, it was showing a boxing match. The horizontal adjustments was off. The top half of the screen showed the boxer's legs, the bottom half their heads, arms and chests. I thought there was a special double-decked boxing arena, and the TV was showing two matches at once.)

Even if you didn't participate in a large event, you may have watched. When I was born, somewhat before 1950, women kept house, men worked, and schools were segregated. What changes have you seen in your society and the way it treats women? African-Americans? Hispanics? Asians? The people who practice the love that dares not mention its name? (If I mention it, I'll set off filters.)



Eating - Holidays and Hard Times

Food makes memories and binds families together. How did you celebrate Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas? What did you eat, and how did you cook it? (Some people in Texas deep-fry their turkeys for Thanksgiving. I barbecue mine, with mesquite chips.) How did you decorate the house? Did you do anything special for breakfast, lunch or dinner on your birthday? If you are writing an autobiography, and you are an American between 25 and 50, there is a good chance Super Bowl Sunday is one of your major holidays. Don't forget to describe it.

Did your family celebrate any holidays that were special to your religious or ethnic heritage? If, for instance, you are Jewish, Muslim or Sikh, how did you feel when Christmas rolled around? How did your parents help you cope?

This would be a good place to ask about heirloom recipes, too.

What was your favorite meal, apart from the holidays?

Not everyone had steak every Saturday night when they were growing up. I don't think anything brought the reality of the Great Depression home to me more than my mother's description of eating corn meal mush for dinner. When I was substitute teaching for $75 a week, I used to eat boiled wheat instead of rice. The wheat was seven cents a pound down at the feed store, right next to the layer mash. Rice was 29 cents a pound. Describe your hard times; maybe your kids will appreciate what they have. (Maybe they will pick up their room without being told, too.)



The Unknown Side

The next question is one I ask at dinner parties a lot. "What have you done that no one would guess you'd done, to look at you"? People are surprising.

One evening, when my daughter was a Girl Scout, we adults were sitting around the fire after the girls had gone to their tents. Talk turned to wool sweaters scented with wood smoke, and other memorable odors. A small, quiet fellow who everyone in the troop called "Grandpa" told us he'd never forget the smell of a Japanese pillbox wiped out by a flame thrower. When World War II broke out he'd lied about his age and gone to Guadalcanal as a Sea Bee.

Our children took ballet lessons with the children of a thin, scholarly piano teacher. I never thought of him as an athlete until he swam the length of our pool, twice, underwater. He told us his lungs had always been good; when he was a boy he climbed Mt. Whitney, the tallest peak in the continental United States, in a single day.

An accountant used to work down the hall from me. She had glasses, brown hair and paid meticulous attention to detail. Her office had a wall of spectacular underwater photos. I asked her once if she had bought reprints from the National Geographic. She said, no, she and her husband lived rather frugally so that they could spend two weeks a year SCUBA diving. They had been all over the Caribbean and the South Pacific. She'd taken about half, he the others

During my brief stint as an eighth-grade math teacher, the ace reporter from the school paper interviewed all of us first-year teachers. I wanted to tell him about being tear gassed by riot police in Berkeley or almost tattooed by headhunters in Borneo. He asked, "What's your favorite food?"

Years of asking that question have convinced me that everyone has done something exciting, interesting or amazing at least once in their life. Your deed doesn't have to be a huge, death-defying stunt; just something to make your grandchildren say, "Wow - I never knew that!"

There are a lot of subjects that don't fit any of the above very well. Many of them are what I call the "est" questions. What is the best meal you've ever eaten? Worst? (What are the ten best, for that matter, and three worst?) What was the best vacation you've ever taken? Worst? What was the nicest act of human kindness you've performed or benefited from? What was the most beautiful sunset (sunrise, waterfall, rolling hillside covered with wildflowers) y

Answer 3

The person you are interviewing is younger than I am.  

So,  what was life like in the Fifties?

How did the Vietnam war affect you?

I would like to know about life during WWI myself, but waited too long to ask.