From Vox Magazine: Oral historian Jeff Corrigan goes on the record

Published in 2/12 print issue of Vox magazine and published on voxmagazine.com

It’s one thing to read a history book. It’s another to talk to someone who is a part of it. Jeff Corrigan, an oral historian for The State Historical Society of Missouri, has spent nearly seven years listening to people tell their life stories.

Corrigan, who has a background in environmental science, checks his audio devices and packs a bag with granola bars, hard candy and water before nestling into interviewees’ living room sofas. Some of these interview recordings and transcripts are posted on the historical society’s website.

Traditionally, oral histories exist to preserve a record, but they can also be used in different mediums, including radio and documentary voice-overs. Corrigan compares the interview process to a visit to the doctor’s office; he says people can sometimes be more open to telling complete strangers details of their lives than they are telling close friends and family.

Unlike historical texts, which readers can interpret in different ways, oral histories are raw experiences that add depth to documentation. As Corrigan says, someone can learn more about World War II from a veteran than from reading a book. During interviews for his Missouri Environmental Oral History collection, he asks about experiences ranging from the Joplin tornado to desegregation in public schools.

Why is continuing oral history so important?

Corrigan: People studying wars look at diaries, journals and letters; they look at official records. But today, people aren’t documenting the way they used to. People aren’t collecting tweets and Facebook posts. People stopped writing letters, and I imagine you and some of your friends probably don’t write that many emails. There’s a large portion of history that’s being lost. How are historians going to study people today? One way is by documenting oral history. You put it in our archives, and it’s preserved.

What is your preferred method for recording an interview?

Corrigan: I’m a fan of audio only. I also think a lot of the people I interview were alive before television even existed, so for some, television is for celebrities. That’s just a different world. So, I find that if I do an audio-only interview, I get a much longer interview, and I get a much more conversational interview.

Are there techniques you have learned to use during interviews?

Corrigan: I did an interview once, and I could clearly see something was wrong with the person I was interviewing. I didn’t know what, but something was clearly wrong. She was getting flustered, she was sweating, and there was something physically going on. So, I stopped the interview. It turns out she needed to use the restroom. She said, “For all of eternity, I’m not going to let people know that I had to go pee.” I have a hand signal now, and I tell people when I interview them, ”For whatever reason, if you need to stop the interview and take a break, answer the phone, do anything, just raise your hand.” I feel like she thought she was going to feel embarrassed. That’s nothing to be embarrassed about.

Describe one of your most unforgettable interviews.

Corrigan: One of my favorite interviews was with Tom Engelhardt. He was the editorial cartoonist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for 30-some years and did more than 6,000 political cartoons. He reminded me of Mr. Rogers in his voice, his demeanor. He was just so fascinating. He was talking about Oxford, studying art, and all of a sudden, he starts telling me that he used to babysit John Updike’s child and played Scrabble with John Updike. That just came out of the blue. I mean, it’s John Updike. I know a lot of people who would probably — well, I don’t know if you’d want to play Scrabble with him or not. You probably would lose. He’s probably very good at Scrabble.

How long is a typical interview?

Corrigan: Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor should it have been. It takes time to build a large oral history collection, and if you’re just trying to pump them out, the quality is going to suffer. There’s some anxiety about, “Oh my gosh, it’s going to be two or three hours long.” They’re closer to 30 minutes to an hour, maybe two hours at most. It also depends on how old is that person? It makes sense that the 90-something-year-old person’s interview was one of the longest. We had nine decades to cover. One thing you have to remember is the interview is not about you. So, you have to put aside anything they say that could be offensive to you. It’s their history, and it’s them sharing it with you.

Do you think oral history will endure?

Corrigan: I do. It’s actually a really booming field right now. More and more people discuss it, which I don’t think happened a few decades ago. People in other disciplines besides history are starting to pick up on the value in interviewing those within that field, topic or research area. I definitely have interviewed people that are very passionate about what they do, and they’ve been very successful at it. It is a reminder to people that you need to do what you love to do. That somebody would dedicate themself to just one thing or a few things and be so passionate about it and affect change — it is hard not to be inspired by that.