Dimon Kendrick-Holmes: The right question, the right story

Reporters don't like to be told what to do.

I know because I recently tried to assign a story to a reporter and he switched it up on me.

I don't want to embarrass anybody, so let's just call this reporter "Chuck." And while we're at it, let me just randomly assign him a last name -- say, "Williams."

This wasn't technically a Ledger-Enquirer assignment. Somebody from the Chattahoochee Valley Libraries had suggested I participate in "The Mildred Terry Memory Project," probably knowing that I would find it really cool and would write a column urging other folks to get involved too.

The project is part of StoryCorps, which began in 2003 with the opening of a recording booth in New York City's Grand Central Terminal. People from all walks of life were invited to tell their stories, and in 2005 National Public Radio began broadcasting the best of the stories every week on its "Morning Edition" show.

Founded on the oh-so-true premise that everybody has a story to tell, StoryCorps has since set up shop in mobile booths launched from the Library of Congress as well as libraries across America.

And now it's in Columbus at the Mildred L. Terry Library, founded in 1953 as a "colored only" library. The library is inviting anyone to make an appointment to share stories about the library or the nearby Fifth Avenue School, or anything about life in Columbus. It runs through December and there's no cost to participate.

So I agreed to participate and needed to take somebody to interview me for 40 minutes. I immediately thought of Chuck Williams, who regularly interviews community leaders for 40 minutes for our weekly Sunday Interview.

This would be an opportunity to witness Chuck in action, and perhaps to empathize with the folks I'm asking him to interview.

Chuck agreed, providing of course that I buy him lunch afterward.

Then I told Chuck how it would go down. Since I didn't actually grow up in Columbus and have no connection whatsoever to the Terry Library, except that I bought some of their bookshelves when they remodeled and the great staff there once moved heaven and earth to find me a DVD copy of "A Christmas Story," Chuck would draw a connection between my family and the library.

Namely, that Carson McCullers fought for African Americans in Columbus to have access to books and that McCullers' principal at Columbus High School was my great-grandfather.

Flimsy, I know.

Chuck pretended to listen to my instructions. I am, after all, his boss.

We sat down in front of our microphones, and Silvia Bunn, the library manager, started recording.

That's when Chuck asked me how I got my hyphenated last name. That led to a discussion about my family, which led us briefly to Columbus but then away to the Alabama

woods where I grew up, then to Nashville where I met Bess, then to Germany where we learned to be a team.

Eventually we came full circle back to Columbus, where Bess and I live and work and now have four children.

I'd strongly encourage you to go to www.cvlga.org/storycorps and make an appointment to tell your story. Or take somebody you know, especially someone who's lived a long rich life here, and you do the interviewing.

For me, it was a great experience, even though Chuck not once asked me about Carson McCullers or anything I'd told him to do.

Instead, he pulled a bunch of other stories out of me, and ended with this question, "What does family mean to you?"

To which, without thinking, I said, "Really, it's everything."

And that's my Columbus, where every day I wonder about people like T.C. Kendrick and his son T.C. Jr., and J. Homer Dimon and his daughter Martha, people who hover in my distant past but whom I never met.

Thanks for not listening, Chuck.

Dimon Kendrick-Holmes, executive editor, dkholmes@ledger-enquirer.com

This story was originally published October 23, 2015 at 4:19 PM with the headline "Dimon Kendrick-Holmes: The right question, the right story ."