Eddie Brumfield Jr. In His Own Words Part 1
I have a guest blogger Kerry Shelton, grandson of Eddie Brumfield Sr. He describes why he interviewed his grandfather.
About six years ago, I decided to interview my grandfather Eddie Brumfield Sr. after listening to a series of interviews on NPR (National Public Radio) highlighting the historical perspective of older Americans. It had been my intention to record my grandfather for some time as a result of my growing knowledge of African/African American history and to learn more of my own personal family history. I thought it might be a good idea to interview Big Daddy, especially since he enjoyed sharing his stories and because I was so impressed with his razor-like ability to recall dates, people and events, even at the young age of 93. I had heard a number of the stories during previous visits with him, but I was aware that there were many more stories of which some family members were aware and others were not. So, in the Spring of 2010, I decided to craft a series of questions, conversation prompts mostly, to help direct me through a series of major periods of his life. Once he started the talking, there was very little I really needed to ask.
Upon completion of the interview, about six hours of video recording, I wasn’t sure what I would do with the information. My initial thought was to just hold on to the video and at some future date, when he was no longer with us, we could gather the family together and relive the stories and celebrate the life of our beloved Big Daddy. Some years later however, during a discussion at family funeral, my uncle initiated a conversation about his young daughter, in elementary school at the time, who had been assigned a school project to interview her grandfather (her teacher, having found out that her grandfather was a nonagenarian, exhorted her to interview him). I informed my uncle that I had the video recording of Big Daddy that I could email to him, but since the file was too big to email, I decided to upload the video to Youtube, and thus publish the information to any and all family and friends desiring to view the living history of Big Daddy.
.https://youtu.be/V0ALMFMi3-w
-----Tree Gardener
