StoryCorps has been in town almost a month now. By the time the crew pulls up stakes Fridaynext stop Los Angeles — they will have recorded about 140 oral histories of local residents. Some will have come from among the well-known in the community. Brother Jeff Fard, for example, was going to talk about hip-hop.
But most of the interviews, conversations, really, are among friends or family. Husband sitting at a table across from wife talking about her father. This is the gift of StoryCorps’ oral histories. They illuminate the lives of the people otherwise unknown and, in doing so, reveal them as anything but regular or typical or unimportant.
These interviews will be archived along with more than 30,000 others in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. A fraction, fewer than 1 percent, will be edited and aired on NPR. More will play locally on KGNU, which is hosting StoryCorps in Denver.
On Monday, the second interview of the day was reserved by Heather Clifton who was interviewing her mother, Dorothy Lung.
“Mom just celebrated her 90th birthday,” Heather says, resting a hand on her mother’s shoulder.
Dorothy Lung is wearing a lovely knit sweater, earrings and makeup. Her hair is just so. This is audio, but perhaps she has dressed for the occasion? “No,” Heather says. “I’ve never seen her leave the house without makeup. “And I always wearing earrings,” Dorothy says.
Heather listens to StoryCorps every Friday morning on NPR and just happened to come upon the trailer parked in the plaza between the Denver Public Library and the Denver Art Museum. “I love the concept of sharing stories. We all have this human connection with each other. We all have stories that have shaped who we are.”
So she asked her mom if she could interview her.
“I just said whatever she wants to do is OK by me,” Dorothy says. They plan to talk about Dorothy’s life, starting with her marriage.
“My mom married a Chinese man,” Heather says.
“So, Heather is half-Chinese,’ Dorothy says.
“And she’d never even seen a Chinese person,” Heather continues.
“Never,” Dorothy says.
Dorothy Hashberger married Harry Lung at a time when Colorado law banned inter-racial marriage, “so they took a bus to Kansas to be married,” Heather says.
They met in the King Joy restaurant, which was somewhere around 15th and Welton. There was a Help Wanted sign in the window. Dorothy was 18. The manager led her to the back for an interview “and I half-thought he was leading me to an opium den,” Dorothy says. “I didn’t know anything about the Chinese.” He hired her despite the fact she couldn’t tell chow mein from sweet and sour pork. “My husband worked there, too. And I fell in love with him and he fell in love with me.”
Harry and Dorothy married in December 1941, just days before Pearl Harbor. They remained married until his death 49 years later.
As Heather and her mother enter the recording studio in the trailer, Bob Cass and his wife, Fangfang Xu, leave.
“I wanted to share the story of my father Xu Beihong,” Fangfang says.
Had I been more observant, I would have noticed the banners in the plaza heralding the display of Xu Beihong’s paintings at the Denver Art Museum. It is the first North American display of his work. Xu was born in 1895 and died in 1953, when Fangfang was 6 years old. She is visiting Denver to help prepare the exhibition. “My father was considered a founding father of modern Chinese painting.”
He had long wanted to display his work in the U.S. but was forced to abandon his plans after Pearl Harbor was attacked.
It is only a coincidence of scheduling that places the lives of Dorothy Lung and Fangfang Xu back to back. But that is the nature of a city and its stories. So many disparate lives, meeting for a moment, connecting unexpectedly, a chorus of voices now preserved.
Tina Griego writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
