Origins

Everyone has an origin story: where they began, how they came to realize their identity . . . Mine started when I was about five years old. My family lived in the Seattle, Washington, area, which also happens to be the home of an amazing storyteller by the name of Debbie Dimitre. She's well-known for her first-person portrayals of famous women in American history, women like Annie Oakley and Eleanor Roosevelt. Just by chance, we went to one of her presentations at the local library. As a pre-schooler, I might have been a little younger than her target audience, but no matter. I was held captive by the story nonetheless. Looking back, I can see that was the first time I realized the magic that can happen when history is told well. I was hooked.

Over the next six years, until we moved away, I dragged my parents across town to every Debbie Dimitre performance possible. I must have seen her tell each story in her repertoire at least three or four times. (Much credit goes to my parents for putting up with this enthusiasm and repetition.) But it didn't end there. I was so enraptured by her stories that I wanted to know more about the people she portrayed. I checked out every book from the local library about these women. I read a book on Deborah Sampson over and over, until it literally fell apart. My interest in each woman's story broadened to an interest in her historical context, and I branched out to reading books about entire time periods in addition to single-person biographies. Soon I was spouting random facts about the American Revolution at the dinner table and turning our backyard into a colonial farm.

At that age, I wasn't really thinking, "this is what I want to do when I grow up." But I did know that a passion was growing inside me for history's good stories, told well. It started with one story, sparking an interest. If that can happen with me, it can certainly happen with today's students. All it takes for a spark, I believe, is one good story.