Five Questions with… Larry Lehmer

Posted on September 5, 2007 in Five Questions by DM

Five Questions With… is a weekly series on DMweblife highlighting Des Moines area bloggers and their blogs! This edition features Larry Lehmer, a family historian who savors connections to the past and cherishes the present. Larry’s blog is called Passing It On, co-located with his business website at www.whenwordsmatter.com.

1. What’s the focus of your blog?
My blog is about all aspects of saving and writing family histories. It’s a subject I feel passionate about and I’ve found that many others are just as interested in at as I am. My challenge has been to connect with those people who would benefit from what I do. As a writer, a blog seems like a natural showcase for my writing while tapping into their interest in the subject. I really thought that I had missed the boat, though, before I met Mike Sansone. He convinced me that blogging was more than a fad and that it made perfect sense for someone like me. I try to keep it interesting and provocative, in an inspiring sort of way.

2. What aspect of blogging do you enjoy the most?
I like the idea that I can write as much as my schedule allows. Just like anything else, a writer needs to write as much as possible to stay sharp. Many of my family history projects are geared to stories told in the teller’s voice. While that’s valuable to the storyteller’s audience, it’s limiting to the writer. The blog lets me write in my own natural voice.

3. What’s an activity besides blogging that you can’t live without?
I worked in the newspaper business for 35 years and used to consider myself a news junkie. It was pretty cool to be on the cutting edge of everything, including reading the wire as news was breaking. But now, in the era of cable news and the internet, there’s pretty much a 24-7 news cycle available to anyone with a broadband connection. Oddly, I’m less interested in news as it’s presented today. There’s more stuff on, but it’s less interesting or important. I find myself increasingly drawn to old standbys like PBS and NPR. Bill Moyers is a national treasure and I’ve become quite a fan of The History Detectives. I think I have a curious mind. I like lots of things.

4. What’s the best advice - personal or professional - you’ve ever received?
When I was in college, I went from math major to a psychology major in a 5-year span. By my fifth year, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do and started taking some journalism classes. A professor at Omaha University, Warren Francke, asked me to write for the school paper. I told him once that I was helping a friend cover high school football games, walking the sideline and charting tackles for his game stories. Warren asked me: “Does your friend get paid?” When I responded “yes,” he said something to the effect that I should be getting paid, too. I soon started a part-time job as a sports reporter, my first paying writing job. Even though journalism is a notoriously poor paying profession, I’ve always considered myself a professional that deserved to be paid fairly for what I do. I think he taught me that.

5. What’s something you’ve accomplished in the past five years that you are particularly proud of?
Two things, actually. The first is breaking away from the corporate world to begin my career as an entrepreneur. That’s a big step for someone who spent an entire career working for others. It’s a decision I’ve never regretted. The second is the success of my children. This is consistent with my passion for family history, I think. They are the cornerstone of my legacy. Our oldest boy, Aaron, works for social justice at the Ella Baker Center in Oakland, Calif., continuing a lengthy career of activism in support of environmental and social issues. Our daughter, Meghan, earned a college degree by working during the day and attending classes at night. She has a good job in IT at the Iowa Foundation for Medical Care. Our youngest son, Bret, just earned his doctorate in astrophysics at Penn State, got married recently and is headed to Durham, England, this fall where he’ll do deep space research on a three-year, post-doctoral fellowship. My wife, Linda, had at least as much to do with their success as I did and is as proud of them as I am. We’re both waiting for some grandkids to spoil.

And the Secret Sixth question (and a seventh!) I asked Larry after reading his initial answers to the five questions:

6. You mentioned that you aren’t as interested in the news now that’s in an always-available cycle. Do you think that the 24-hour nature of news reporting today has affected the content of the news, and/or the quality of the reporting, in any particular way?
Cable TV and the Internet have actually obscured the very nature of news. When Walter Cronkite had 30 minutes a day to do news, you got a pretty dense news report. Now that CNN, Fox and everybody else have every minute of every day at their disposal, they fill up most of that time with pseudo news. Real news, especially investigative news, is expensive to do and not necessarily good TV. Putting two or more talking heads from opposite sides of an issue on screen to duke it out is not journalism and it’s not instructive. But it is cheaper than having a reporter dig out the real story. The Internet is even worse. Bloggers tend to be more like columnists than reporters. They react and respond rather than create. It’s largely a derivative phenomenon, playing off ground broken by real journalists. I find the courting of bloggers, especially unnamed bloggers, by mainstream media to be troubling. Although they may argue that they’re connecting with real people in their community, I think their credibility takes a real hit when they rely on bloggers to provide material for their news columns, even simple things like movie reviews.

and 7. You noted that lots of people seem to share your passion for and interest in telling family histories - myself included! Why do you think that is so?
In previous generations, family ties were so much stronger. It wasn’t unusual to see three or four generations living under the same roof. In rural Iowa, they often worked together as well. Stories flowed and lessons were shared among generations. We’re much more fragmented now. I have three children and two of them live more than 1,500 miles away. For many of us, those physical separations create a longing. By tracing and preserving our family histories, we can fill in some of the gaps in our own personal histories. Our family stories are truly the best way of connecting generations. When an elder family member dies, their stories are gone forever unless we’ve taken the steps necessary to save them.

Des Moines-area bloggers: to be considered for this feature, just drop me an email with your name, location, and blog address, and answers to the first five questions I’ve asked here. I’ll reply with your “Secret Sixth Question”!

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