Every so often, you know that it’s time again … time to clean up the storage areas in your house and decide what needs to be kept, donated, or tossed. Recently while doing some basement cleanup, I came across a large box of cassette tapes. I remembered the box: it was mostly old music tapes, and I now have digital versions of most of the songs on the tapes. I had also removed the voice tapes a few years ago and made digital copies of them. They made a great Christmas present as I recall.

But as I starting sorting through the box again, I discovered two surprises. First, there were a few voice tapes I had missed, and those will be fun to digitize and discover what’s there. Second (and the bigger surprise), a number of the tapes were actually mixed content—part music recordings and part recorded conversations of my parents and siblings as I was growing up. My dad was an avid recorder with his pocket cassette player, and you never knew what was going to end up on tape. This experience for me has felt a bit like going back over records I have seen before and discovering new research clues in them, except in this case the records are … tapes!

On Amazon I purchased a USB cassette player with digital recording capabilities, for under $30. With the free Audacity software installed, it’s a breeze to capture these old analog memories to digital. I have started transferring the voice parts from the mixed tapes, and I’m (pleasantly) amazed at what I am hearing. At the time of the recordings, I was pretty wrapped up in my own life, but now I can see some touching perspectives as I think about how these memories became part of the tapestry of my life, and my family.

Recently David Castleton, Director of the Granite Family History Center, published a blog article on granitefhc.com that sums up the opportunities we have to share the memories we discover. With his permission, here is an excerpt from the article …

In almost every home you will find boxes, files, or sacks of memorabilia just waiting to be rediscovered. We all save cards, letters, invitations, certificates, awards, school projects, pictures, newspaper articles, and other documents that have special meaning. Many times they outlive  those that saved them and are discarded by others not appreciating their significance.  Many memories are lost and opportunities to better understand and connect vanish.

Over the past couple of years I have been the recipient of numerous records that close and distant family members have given to me when they find out I am interested in family history. Usually they say,  “I found these and didn’t know what to do with them so I thought I would give them to you.”  Initially I looked at the deposit as a burden. However, as I have gone through the records I realize there are many wonderful stories to share and lives that can be enriched by these treasures. Let me give you a couple of examples.

A few years ago a cousin gave me all the letters my grandfather wrote to his family when he was a missionary in New Zealand over 100 years ago. The paper was brittle and discolored. The letters had been in a briefcase for many generations and no one had read them. As I began to read the letters I felt joy in getting to know my grandfather better. I learned about his relationship with his parents and siblings and I could feel the love he had for his family, his fellowmen, and the gospel. I knew these letters needed to be shared with other family members. Luckily, at the Granite FHC we have a book scanner that is perfect for this type of scanning. I was able to digitize each letter and now I can share them with other family members.

When my mother was no longer able to live on her own, we boxed up all kinds of memories she had saved over the years. Again I have found treasures that need to be shared. One of those treasures was a book containing notes from all my mother’s co-workers at a retirement party they gave for her. It was full of well wishes and descriptions of ways that my mother had blessed their lives. Again the book scanner came in handy in preserving this record and making it easy to share with my children and grandchildren.

So, look for those golden memory opportunities that may be right there within your reach. Find memories, evaluate them (including privacy and ownership issues), digitize them, and share them—whether on social media, genealogy platforms like FamilySearch and Ancestry, or through digital copies. You’ll be amazed at the dots you can connect in your own life and the lives of others!