Photo: Dick Lane and Helen Wallace in “Sioux City Sue,” 1946.

In 1975, while still in college, I did a short series of interviews. There was no real purpose to these, other than they were with people who interested me on some level, and I had a sort of childlike faith that an outlet for them would appear. As it happened, one of those interviews did lead to a life-changing event, resulting in what was to become my first book. I went on to a career in business, but eventually went back full time to writing. In the last 35 years I’ve interviewed a lot of people–and have shoeboxes full of cassette tapes to show for it. Those original reel-to-reel talks, however, never were of any use to me.

Last year, contemplating a new project, I took the plunge into digital recording, replacing the old imperfect cassette tape with the new imperfect (so they tell me) SD card. Coming up to speed, I consulted with the people in the Oral History program at Cal State Fullerton, who very kindly gave me pointers. Soon, I was making sound files, converting them to MP3s, and e-mailing them to a typist halfway across the world.

My encounter with the oral history people reminded me of those reels of tape stored out in my garage. Were they still playable? Would the Sony quarter-track deck that recorded them still work? And could they be converted to digital files and put on CD?

Happily, the answer to all these questions was YES. And so, slowly, I digitized them, made preservation CDs, and backed them all up as recommended. But I still didn’t have a use for them, other than to maybe donate them to the Herrick library. Then the Daily Mirror became an independent entity, and Larry said that he would welcome any content I might wish to contribute. It didn’t occur to me at first that a transcription of one of these stone age interviews might be appropriate to the Mirror, but then one day it hit me–I did indeed have a voice that still rang in the ears of generations of local TV viewers.

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