Good Neighbor Podcast: North Shore
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of North Shore
Good Neighbor Podcast: North Shore
EP #79 - The Art of Personal History: A Conversation with Francie King
Francie King, founder of History Keep, is dedicated to preserving personal histories that might otherwise be lost forever. With a background in journalism, Francie helps individuals articulate the stories they want future generations to remember. Through intimate, professional interviews, she creates powerful legacies, allowing clients to share stories they've never told—even to their closest family members. For Francie, the process is about much more than recording facts; it’s about building trust and allowing people to reflect on their lives in meaningful ways.
Francie also dispels common misconceptions about personal history work, emphasizing that a true life story emerges from thoughtful, sustained interviews rather than simple templates. She highlights the collaborative effort behind each project, from writing to design and photography. Drawing on her own experience of growing up with a mother who had polio, Francie expresses regret for not asking her parents the questions she now asks her clients. Whether you're interested in preserving your own story or capturing the memories of loved ones, visit historykeep.com to learn how to preserve what matters most before it's too late.
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Yvonne Godfrey.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Today, we have the distinct pleasure of speaking with Francie King. She is the owner and founder of History. Keep, francie, how are you? I'm very well. Thank you so much. Wonderful, wonderful. We're so happy to have you with us. Francie, could you please tell our listeners about your company?
Speaker 3:Yes, I'd be happy to. History Keep grew out of a long career as a journalist and publications director. I found I really really loved story and I loved hearing people's stories and I felt that oftentimes telling stories is both a privilege for me to hear and an exercise people enjoyed. So I founded History Keep in 2007, using my background and heading into an industry where people are allowed to delve into their own histories, their own stories, their own backgrounds. Some of them did this to leave a product for their grandchildren, some for their friends, some for their colleagues, but it's enormously satisfying, I think, on both counts. History Keep has grown. We've talked to people from all across the country, some of them international, and the product at the end is usually a book that can be shared and it contains a life story. Essentially and we are in this way we are keeping history a personal history.
Speaker 2:Beautiful Francie. How did you get into this business?
Speaker 3:Well, I spent my life as a writer my professional life starting very early on, and in newspapers and magazines. I still do a little bit of newspaper and magazine work, but I focused on this because I love the interview process. I love what happens to people when you give them permission to talk about themselves and you give them the freedom to talk about stories they want to share with their families. It's satisfying. It's taken me a while to get into the rhythm of it and I think it takes all of us that time, but the business runs pretty smoothly now and it's not that complicated. It's relationships between one person and myself and it's me asking them, pulling out from them the stories of their lives.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. You know, sometimes, even though it's our lives and even though it's our story, sometimes we can't really share our stories or tell our stories the way that we would like to, and sometimes it takes the vision and the writing capability of a writer to really pull that out of us and create this beautiful, beautiful story that causes people to just say wow.
Speaker 3:Sometimes it's not so happy. There have been stories I've heard that even spouses haven't heard Because once you get into the rhythm of doing this and you give people the freedom to do it, they get very intense and very interior, and then I feel like it's an honor to be with them and to be the recipient of what they're saying.
Speaker 2:Love it. I can only imagine I love it Sounds beautiful. Thank you, welcome. So what are some myths or misconception that you've discovered in this industry? Francie, I think.
Speaker 3:I've seen several companies try to do this as a business by offering a book in which you write your own stories. Say you write one story a week or one story a month. You send that back to the company, the company places it, you come back, you send them another story another week and the company takes that Pretty soon with enough stories. They feel they have the story of your life, of a continuous interview, and people often just give it up.
Speaker 3:I have seen the products. I'm not nearly as enamored of them as I am of my colleagues' stories, which involve intense interviews over a period of time, sometimes weeks, sometimes months, not just a story a week that you think of and send off. So I don't consider those as successful as I do the work of my colleagues who do it the way I do, which is one-on-one, continuous over a period of a fairly intense period. So misconceptions are that you can buy this off the market and without knowing anything about your provider, and I'm not sure that's a good way to go to tell your story. There are also people who get into the business who may not have the interview skills that a lot of us do from other professions. In this profession I have seen psychiatrists and social workers ease into the business because their business is talking to people and learning about people and pulling information out of people and being receptive to people. This, I think, makes a much more effective product at the end well.
Speaker 2:Thank you for sharing that. You know you brought some insights that people are not really aware of, and why would they be? Because this is not their area of expertise.
Speaker 3:So thank you for sharing and putting together a book involves more than just a writer and an interviewee. It involves design, it involves photography or photo cleanup, it involves a printer and then a whole marketing strategy to promote the book if the book is going on the public market. So it's just. It's a team effort If people want to make a public statement about their lives. Many don't. Many just do these books for their families. So my part of it is the interviewing and the writing of it, and then I manage. I can manage the production part if the client wishes Most do so?
Speaker 2:I'm sure that's a whole other chapter. Yes, indeed, so changing gear, francie, can you tell us, outside of work, what you do for fun? So, outside of work, what do you do for fun, francie?
Speaker 3:First of all, I step away from my computer, computer which is very healthy. Uh, I have a garden. I'm a very active gardener and I am a reader. I love the theater. Um, my friends and I are go to music and I'm active in a lot of things here in my town. It's a small, it's a relatively small village. There are a lot of things you can become involved in if you have interests out there. I'm, I've been in theater activities in the past few years as an actor, so it's kind of a varied life.
Speaker 2:Okay, wonderful, wonderful. And can you describe one hardship or one of life's challenge that you rose above and can now say because of it, you're better and stronger? What comes to your mind, francie?
Speaker 3:Probably the first thing that comes to mind is that my mother suffered from polio in the 50s. I was five years old and she raised my siblings and I from a wheelchair. So early in my life I thought everybody had a family like this, and so you know there are things we didn't do. I didn't go shopping with her. I was not aware that that was something people did until later, and I grew up through that. My mother was quite clear in the head and very supportive, but I only began to think about the differences of my life, my younger life, when I got into my 40s and started writing about it. She did not live very long, only to 63. I was a young mother by then and her passing was enormously difficult for me because she had been so supportive.
Speaker 3:I think when you have a person in your life that you really have this connection with and that person disappears at a critical time, you've got to readjust. You really need to readjust your life and yourself and your mission in your life. So I would say that I've spent a number of decades doing that, and I'm back thinking about it again now that I'm much older. My kids are grown, we all seem to manage. The siblings and I. We all went on to different professions. All of us are writers, interestingly, but my brother became a scientist, my sister is a sculptor, so the act of writing figures in all of that, and we grew up with a mother who wrote children's books, so we had a lot of background there. I would say that's probably the thing that comes to mind first is that we grew up differently than other kids did and we've made our way that sounds beautiful.
Speaker 2:Not the condition, but she had a passion for writing and it came through her, onto her children, shown itself in different ways, and that's that's beautiful.
Speaker 3:Both my siblings have published books. I've published books. It was a good legacy. I've thought of that more and more now.
Speaker 2:My dad was a physicist not a book writer, nice, so Francie. Can you tell our listeners one thing that they should remember about History?
Speaker 3:Keep, yes, I think History Keep is an opportunity to memorialize their memories and to share them. That is my mission. I want them to be able to feel good about what they've said and what they're leaving behind. A lot of times, people don't do this in time and their parents pass away. That was my case. I did not ask my parents the questions I'm asking people now and I deeply regret that because I missed a lot and I don't want that to be the fate of my clients. So they have this chance. If their children are not asking those questions, I am, and they have things to tell their families through me. So that's what history keeps me from doing.
Speaker 2:That's beautiful, that's beautiful. Oftentimes, we learn from our own life situation too late, but we're able to pass that on to someone else so that they don't make that same mistake and their children will have that information. Who's your mother? Who's your mother's mother? Who's your mother's mother? Exactly, yeah, those are important for all of us to know at any given time. Thank you, yes, so, francie, how can our listeners learn more about History? Keep? Do they have a website?
Speaker 3:Yes, I do have a website. It's actually historykeepcom, and they can go to that website, see some of my work, read some of it and know how to reach me. My clients often reach out directly to me via email too, and I think that email is on the site, so you can certainly reach me there. Beautiful so, francie, we thank you for being with us on the site, so you can certainly reach me there Beautiful.
Speaker 2:So, francie, we thank you for being with us on the show today. We really appreciate you and we wish you and history Keep all the very best, moving forward.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much you want. I really enjoyed talking to you.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you for listening to the good neighbor podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPNorthshorecom. That's GNPNorthshorecom, or call 857-703-9406.