Episode 675 - Family History

This week on Monday Morning Mojo, Phil reflects on a meaningful project he recently undertook—helping a friend craft and preserve their family history. Through research, documentation, and storytelling, they brought the past to life. Phil also shares how he has saved and crafted his own family’s legacy over the years, using everything from videos to written records of stories and locations. In this episode, Phil challenges you to document your own family’s history and share these treasured stories with future generations. 

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Transcript

Top performers in every field surround themselves with those who inspire them, who seek to build them up, and who push them to reach beyond their current limits. I'm Phil Buchanan, Executive Chairman of Cannon Financial Institute. I designed Monday Morning Mojo to provide you with a weekly spark, a push, and a boost to your business.

and motivational insight to live your best life. Thanks for joining. Good Monday morning. It is Phil here with episode 675 of Monday Morning Mojo. Apologies to listeners. My sinuses continue to battle with me, but we are persevering to, uh, to get through and be, uh, December to each of you. Hope that your holiday preparations are well underway.

I spent a good part of last week helping some [00:01:00] friends craft. their family history. Now, we weren't crafting that history from scratch. Rather, we were researching, documenting, and then verbalizing their story of their history. Now, no, I'm not a history nor English major. I just love finding a good story and helping people understand it and then to be able to share it with others.

Many years ago I had a very seasoned trust officer share that one of her most prized possessions was a cassette tape, and you millennials will have to go research this, but a cassette tape of a recorded interview that she had done with her parents when they were still living. It inspired me to grab our family's then big VCR camera.

Again, a little bit of research is going to need to be done by those younger listeners out there. But I grabbed that camera and I recorded a sit down interview with my [00:02:00] parents one Christmas afternoon. Their faces and voices still to this day tell me their stories via the digitized transcription of those old videos.

Every family has a history, every home, every home place, every vacation property, every farm, every ranch has a story. A few years back, I started documenting the history of our family farm. I had maps printed and certain locations marked with the story of those locations that had been referenced. I knew I was owned to something when I began to hear other family members telling the history and the stories that I had documented.

It was a really, really cool experience. You know, life is but a series of experiences. Now, some experiences are best kept between just those who live them. Many of those [00:03:00] experiences, many of those stories should be passed on. It's in this understanding of history that allows for real emotional connections to the past that our families have gone through.

On our family farm, there is a small ditch on a piece of the land that runs adjacent to a freshwater creek. When I was a young guy, my dad shared with me that his father discovered a bootlegger there in the 1930s. That bootlegger was making moonshine. Later that day, the sheriff destroyed the still, but the ditch running the water to that still from the creek remains today almost 100 years later.

Folks who visit our farm usually spend several minutes trying to envision what it looked like when the moonshine was brewing. Of course today [00:04:00] you can go to almost any liquor store and buy legal moonshine. I always keep a jar of that legal moonshine with me when we visit that spot on the property. Now is it hokey that I open up that bottle of shine and share it with the visitors?

Well of course it's hokey, but it connects those visitors to the history of that spot and thus they feel a connection to it. Over the next few weeks, each of you will have a chance to work on your family's history. Maybe you'll have the opportunity to interview your parents or your grandparents, maybe it'll be you sharing some history with your kids, nieces and nephews, or maybe your grandchildren, or perhaps it's you and your siblings getting down on paper or in the cloud.

Some of your most prized family stories. My great grandfather and my great grandmother hand built The original [00:05:00] two room house on our farm. I know this from stories passed down and from tax records. My great grandfather died in 1937. My great grandmother in 1940. I don't have any of their writings, any of their perspectives, any of their history.

Now perhaps it's because they didn't write very much down. But how I'd treasure it if they had written it down and I could read it today. Financial legacies are wonderful, but what really connects generations are the stories of the sacrifice, of the risk, of the reward, of the sadness, of the happiness, and of the success that every family experiences.

I really want to challenge you in the coming days and weeks ahead to take the time and document yours. You'll be glad you did, and I promise you, generations to come will be glad you did as well. Monday Morning Mojo is a production of Cannon [00:06:00] Financial Institute. Executive producer of Monday Morning Mojo is Sarah Jones.

Editing and mixing is done by Danny Brunner. Production management is done by McCall Chamberlain. Until next time, I'm Phil Buchanan reminding you to be a force for good. Have a great week and thanks for being part of the Mojo community.