Important to tell true stories
It has been brought to my attention by different people how important communication and how valuable true stories are to the human race.
More than once, people have mentioned this week they enjoy reading my column, which is usually about people and their stories.
Dr. Mark Hetrick told a story at First Baptist Church a week ago about his great-grandparents.
His great-grandfather came home one day and found his great-grandmother fixing a meal in the kitchen.
“How would you like to go to the World’s Fair?” he asked.
The year was 1904 and World’s Fair was in St. Louis.
She declined the invitation. They didn’t have the money nor the time to make the trip, she said.
He left the room and came back about 10 minutes later with suitcase in hand. See ya.
He went to the fair alone and returned home a month later!
Mark said the marriage survived.
Such family stories teach us so much about from where we came.
I love stories.
I have always tried to find reporters who love true stories. So many other things like grammar and spelling can be taught but if a person doesn’t delight in a good, true story, our readers won’t want to read what we write.
I find it impossible to believe so much of the media tells “fake news” as we have been told. It is true we reporters make mistakes. I’m sure I make multiple mistakes every day in my life and some slip into the paper. In fact, I have never helped produce a perfect newspaper. Nor have I read one.
“You just can’t pick up a newspaper and enjoy it, can you?” my wife asked while I reading a newspaper on vacation in another state one day.
It’s an occupational hazard.
“Why did they put that story there? Can’t that story be told better?” I ask when looking through newspapers.
Our stories are important. We need to be sure that they are true and that they are memorable. If no one wants to listen to our stories (or read them) we have lost the game from the beginning.
Dr. Hetrick was making a point about our stories being tied in with God’s stories and that seems to me to be a good definition of history.
- -- Posted by ckthomas on Tue, Sep 24, 2019, at 8:07 PM
Posting a comment requires free registration:
- If you already have an account, follow this link to login
- Otherwise, follow this link to register