

Connecticut Public teamed up with the StoryCorps Mobile Tour to remotely record interviews of people from all across our state. Meet the people behind the mic in this selection of interviews edited by Connecticut Public.
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Two sisters tell the story of their maternal grandmother. She is Native American and was forced to live in an Indian Residential School in British Columbia when she was five.
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Bryan Sayles's twin daughters showed interest in learning music at a young age. Despite challenging times he and his wife always found ways to support Molly's drumming and Emma's trombone playing and music composition. The family talks about how music has brought them together and created lasting memories.
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Endia DeCordova talks with her mother, Gem DeCordova, about how her late father was introduced to the West Indian community in Harford after immigrating to the States from Jamaica. Gem shares how the West Indian Social Club was born out of those early community gatherings and the legacy of kindness and inclusion her husband left behind.
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Connecticut artist Ricky Mestre talks with friend and New Haven Pride Center Executive Director Patrick Dunn about the role art plays in their lives. They explore queer art as a genre and how art has the power to reflect a community.
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Randy Mott in Bloomfield, CT, talks with her 92-year-old mother, Jackie Brown, about the many ways she’s reinvented herself. Jackie shares a funny story of the catalyst for how she became a successful artist and painter at the age of sixty. Jackie still paints today.
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Dawn Ennis shared an intimate conversation with her child, Leif, who was known as Liam when they recorded this StoryCorps conversation. The two talk about what it was like for Dawn to come out to her children as transgender, the loss of Leif’s mom to cancer, and how their family supports each other unconditionally.
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Seventeen-year-old Rae George interviews her mother, Weruché George. The two share their thoughts on honoring and preserving culture here in the U.S. Weruché shares how her Dad’s influence shaped her and what she hopes her children take with them from their Nigerian heritage. Rae offers her advice of gratitude for those who may be new to the U.S.
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Maija Earl recalls her son Erik Sparkowski being outgoing, talkative, and happy while growing up. But in sixth grade, that all changed, as Erik began to struggle in ways he never had. In this StoryCorps CT conversation, Maija and Erik talk about their commitment to finding the right treatment path that would help and support Erik with his anxiety and learning disability.
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Connecticut Lawyers Kim Jacobsen and Kathy Flaherty met while working for the same company. They talk about Kathy’s experience navigating the workplace while being open about her bipolar disorder. Kim shares how an early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease led her to embrace talking openly about disabilities. Their bond of friendship has helped each other and others who live and work with disabilities.
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Shelley Nygren and John Baker met over thirty years ago in a faith community in Southington. They became fast friends who recognized a sense of belonging in one another. Shelley and John share their friendship journey, a few laughs, and an Irish blessing in this conversation.
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Audrey Daigneault of Norwich, CT, was only 16-months old when she contracted the poliovirus in 1949. Audrey says polio "took her childhood and her old age," with lifelong impacts on her physically and emotionally. With the COVID-19 virus continuing to plague the globe and news of vaccine hesitancy in the headlines, Audrey found herself reliving those childhood moments, including being the first in her second-grade class to get a vaccine shot. She sat down with her sister Paula, five years her senior, to ask what she remembered from that time.
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Spouses Beck and Annie Fineman talk about the challenges they face as a queer family and how they’ve embraced parenthood. “I’m really grateful to have you as a co-parent,” Beck tells Annie as he describes how lucky their children are to have her as their mom.

StoryCorps' mission is to preserve and share humanity's stories to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world. In the summer of 2021, Connecticut Public teamed up with StoryCorps Mobile Tour to remotely record interviews of people from all backgrounds across our state. Excerpts were edited and produced locally by Connecticut Public for radio and digital.
The StoryCorps Mobile Tour resulted in 91 interviews recorded with over 190 participants who signed up to share their stories. Connecticut Public chose 24 full-length interviews that have been edited into 4-minute stories for broadcast on Connecticut Public.
Connecticut Public would like to thank Funnybone Records, a community-based independent record label out of Hartford, CT for connecting us with Niamh. Niamh also known as songwriter, producer, and Connecticut native, Jack Riley (they/them), provided music for our StoryCorps CT radio edits and podcast trailer.
StoryCorps CT is supported locally by Connecticut Humanities with funding from Connecticut’s Department of Economic and Community Development, the Office of the Arts and the State Legislature.

StoryCorps is a non-profit organization that provides people across the country with the opportunity to record and preserve the stories of their lives. Since 2003, StoryCorps has recorded over half a million people of all backgrounds and beliefs, preserving them in the StoryCorps Archive, housed at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The archive comprises one of the first and the largest born-digital collections of human voices, featuring tens of thousands of conversations recorded across the United States and around the world.
To learn more about StoryCorps and discover stories from across the country visit, storycorps.org
Funding for StoryCorps and the StoryCorps Mobile Tour is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
