Family stories to treasure

Press, 2 December 1985, Page 12

Family stories to treasure

Bv

LEE MATTHEWS

Family stories are treasured by both the tellers and ■ the listeners. Two Christchurch women have started a service to preserve these tales.

Mrs Miriam Montigue and her daughter, Mrs Clare Lange, run “Recollections.” They hold a series of interviews with a client, then write the stories and family history the person recollects.

“In a sense, we are scribes,” Clare Lange explains. “We don’t edit or interSiret what people tell us. It’s heir story, so we write it the way they want to remember it.” Each “recollection” is a mix of family aneceotes, genealogy, and events which have occurred during the person’s life. A typical “recollection” is about 30 typed pages, but this varies from person to person. The writers’ basic fee is about $4OO, although this depends on the number of pages. Most of their clients are

elderly. Contact has usually been prompted by the person’s family, which does not want to lose the stories. But there is no reason why young people can not use the service.

A surprising amount of Canterbury’s history emerges as the client talks becausee they remember things common place years ago, such as woodstoves and bullock teams, Mariam Montigue finds. “People aged between 75 and 80 years have seen so much in their lives,” she points out. “They’ve gone right from two feet and horses being transport, to men on the moon.”

The "recollection” easily becomes a family heirloom, as it preserves a word picture of the person. “Often we find out more about the person than the

family knows,” Clare Lange declares. “Families tend to assume they know all about the person, then realise later how much they’ve lost through not knowing.” Both women are qualified to do the work. Clare Lange has a masters degrees in psychology, and MiriamMontigue’s job of many years involved writing what she called “potted histories” of people and events. Most of the “recollections” take a week’s work, with at least three, hourlong interviews. The pahuse tape-recorders and short-hand to record the interviews. Each “recollection” is confidential between themselves and the client. Two copies are made; one for the client and one for their records.

They stress that “Recollections” is for ordinary, average people like Nana,' or Uncle John, rather than celebrities.

“The point is, everyone is important to someone,” adds Miriam Montigue.