Your life, by personal historians

By the time she reached 85, the urge to capture her life story in words and pictures caught up with Janet Mustin.

She wasn't motivated by self-importance. Nor did she think a book about her experiences as a wife, mother, and respected watercolorist would be a worthy book-club pick.

Instead, Mustin, who lives in Haverford, envisioned a legacy for her three daughters, their children, and their children's children.

"It's something you think about as you get older," says Mustin, now 86. Still, she says, "the task seemed daunting" until she turned to a team of personal historians who guided her process and created a dozen copies of a hand-bound book with nearly a dozen images of her paintings.

Personal historians are writers for hire - people who will capture your life story in pictures and prose, shepherd it through the publishing process, and stand in the shadows smiling as you sign copies at a family gathering.

Some are retired from other fields: journalism, nursing, and gerontology, for example. Others are young people forging careers they believe will instill pride in aging individuals and provide solace for families.

Interest in what they do is peaking.

"There has been a real watershed in this movement over the past eight to 10 years," says Paula Stahel, president of the Association of Personal Historians, whose membership ranks swelled from 50 to 630 in 10 years.

While membership in one obscure trade association is hardly a trusty indicator of interest in an entire field, the Library of Congress, StoryCorps, and the Smithsonian Institution promote story-saving as well.

At least a half-dozen organizations - many led by established professionals in academia, medicine, and science - say the legacies of ordinary individuals should be preserved for the good of their families, their communities, and their own health.

This passion for personal history is fueled by demographic, technological, and social forces.

The nation's largest demographic, baby boomers, are approaching 65, facing their own mortality, and realizing how little time remains in which to record their parents' stories.

At the same time, many elders feel freer now to speak of the battles they fought in World War II, as soldiers or on the home front, in internment, and in death camps.

Then there's the economy. Massive layoffs are forcing many professionals to rethink career plans. Couple that with the fact that cameras, camcorders, Web sites, and desk-top publishing are more affordable and accessible than ever, and you've got emerging careers.

"Today's technologies have revolutionized the opportunities," Stahel says. Many individuals once focused on accumulating objects and wealth are pulling back financially.

"They realize now it's not the material goods that last," she says, "it's the lessons of the past that help you get through."

For Mustin, the process was relatively painless.

She hired Marty Walton and Linda Lyman of Storehouse Collection of Memories, whom she'd met at a Quaker retreat near Philadelphia.

Walton and Lyman, now based in Kennebunk, Maine, sat down with Mustin for several face-to-face interviews at her home and helped her select the artwork for her hand-bound book.

Mustin had studied art in Germany, where her husband was setting up a factory for the family business, Fleer's Dubble Bubble chewing gum. And she'd suffered an emotional breakdown at one point, an experience she wanted to include in the book.

"That episode seemed to last so long at the time," Mustin says. "But looking back, I could see it really was a short time. The writing, the putting it on paper, helped put the turbulent times in perspective."

Still, collecting personal history presents risks.

"Tapping into memories isn't always pleasant," says Mary O'Brien Tyrrell, of Memoirs Inc.

A former public-health nurse and Vietnam War vet, Tyrrell is based in Minnesota, but like most personal historians, works with families from coast to coast. She has written histories for 273 clients since 1994. Her research was published in the summer 2008 Journal of Aging, Humanities and the Arts.

"I know that in this work you may touch on an unresolved issue that has negative memories, and you have to be prepared to handle that by referring the client to a family therapist," Tyrrell says.

"Personal historians don't do family interventions," she says.

As a business, personal history has few start-up costs, but there is a learning curve in calculating the time involved in conducting interviews, distilling and writing the story, locating photos, researching genealogy, and the book-production process.

"A project can grow more complicated than you anticipated," says Paula Slavens, who stumbled into a $350,000 project her first year on the job.

In that case, the client was a prominent Pittsburgh family that wanted to show future generations how hard their ancestors had worked to create their wealth. The project, which combined genealogy, memoir and social history, and the development of the city of Pittsburgh, took six years to complete.

That project was extreme in every respect, Slavens says. The printing costs alone were $90,000 for 200 copies.

Slavens, a graphic designer and business analyst, left a corporate career to become a personal historian.

"In my very first year, I was able to replace my income from my full-time corporate job," Slavens said.

Lettice Stuart, a former freelance reporter with the Times Picayune in New Orleans and the New York Times, became a personal historian in 1996.

Initially, she charged $6,000 for a book project, plus production costs. Now that fee is $50,000 and she does about a half-dozen books a year. Her clients receive 10 copies of their books, which feature restored family photos and ephemera, such as birth certificates and report cards. The books have linen or leather covers and come in slip cases. Stuart says she entered the field after her mother's sudden death left her regretting missed opportunities.

"One day I had the thought that maybe people would pay me to do this for them. I thought I had made up the idea. Then I discovered the association and found out how little I really knew about what I was doing."

Perhaps the future face of personal history is Alli Joseph, 37, who spent 15 years as a reporter and television producer before starting her own business.

Of American Indian heritage, Joseph goes beyond traditional bound books to present personal histories as digital documentaries, Web sites, scrapbooks, calendars, collages, cookbooks, and quilts.

She calls her business Seventh Generation Stories, a reference to an Iroquois philosophy.

"It's about governing yourself and your actions in a way that will bode well for seven generations after you," she says.

Like Stuart, Joseph was drawn to this work after her mother's death.

"My mother, who was from the Shinnecock nation, had been the collector of stories in the family. But she became ill and died a month before my daughter was born.

"Beyond the pain of my loss, I had a deep sense of regret that I had failed to capture those stories."