Larry App

Although my career has been accounting, since 2005 I have been capturing Life Stories with video of people primarily in my community. The tagline "Extraordinary stories from ordinary people" tells what audience I target. They do not need to be elderly, but many of them are. The oldest interviewee was 103 years old and the youngest was 8. These types of interviews, over 250 now, have extended my story capturing to "things" in my community. An old Italian-American neighborhood has been documented as well as an 1837 grist mill (the oldest in Indiana, the oldest building in my county (1834 log house), the history of my hometown Elkhart, Indiana, and the history of our county's courthouse and its tower clock. Preserving these stories for the benefit of future generations is what I strive for... I am passionate about stories and storytelling in this way. Since I won't be able to do this forever, I would like to teach others to do what I do. I would like them to know the techniques of recognizing a story, developing it, and to tell it in a way that is authentic, creative, and using style (but no spin). This is part of my legacy... to pass on this information so that more stories can be preserved by others.