MEMOIR SAMPLES

Below you'll find a a few excerpts from some of our previous memoirs, showcasing the diverse and heartfelt stories we've had the honor to help craft. You'll also find an excerpt from one of our Audiobook Memoirs. These samples illustrate the depth and breadth of experiences captured through our personalized process, providing a glimpse into the rich legacies our clients are preserving.

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From "Not Here to be Served: Memoirs of a Peace Officer"

“Your brother Alonzo was in here earlier to buy some rope.”
The statement from one of the guys who worked at the Mr. Auto Parts Napa – a store in Waynesboro where many of the local men would congregate to shoot the breeze – puzzled me.

“Rope?”

“Yeah, he said he needed some rope strong enough to pull a car.”

That puzzled me even more.

“What the hell’s he need rope to pull a car for?” I asked. “Alonzo doesn’t own a car.”

It’s my nature to try to make sense of the illogical. Most times, it turns out it wasn’t that illogical to begin with.
“He’s probably helping Miss Ada with something,” I said.
Miss Ada was a black woman in her eighties who seemed a hundred. Alonzo was always helping out the old and needy folks in the community: He’d been ordained a Baptist minister (I remember his first sermon, about Jonah and the whale) and – although he wasn’t employed by any church (or, mostly, at all) – still did his best to be of service and spread God’s word.

My intention was to track my twin brother down and see if he needed any help. Then I got distracted (I’d left something at the Dairy Queen after lunch that I needed to retrieve), then I got busy. It slipped my mind.

The words “If only” are among the most pointless. Hindsight is 20/20, but only serves any purpose when a lesson is learned. Usually, we learn too late.

There were as many reasons Alonzo could’ve needed that rope as there are such late-learned lessons. Not a one of them makes any difference, and none will ever change the sad fact that, on a Thursday in August of 1998, my brother hanged himself from a tree.

From "Becoming the Restaurant Diva"

Despite my love for LA Weight Loss, I was ready for a new challenge, and I accepted a position as the Director of RAP, (Referral Appreciation Program) recruiting with Siegfried.

The transition from a predominantly female workplace to the almost entirely male accounting world was tough. I refused to let that (or the fact that I had virtually zero corporate accounting experience) keep me from excelling at my job. Although I left the office many days in tears, failure was not an option. I put up with the mumbled comments from co-workers questioning my qualifications; I put up with the disapproving stares of my boss in the elevator as he assessed my decidedly non-accounting-type wardrobe (like open-toed heels with black nail polish). As they say, I put on my “big girl panties.” I joined professional networks, worked tirelessly, traveled often, and soon became known as “the mouth of the firm.” And I kicked ass.

Because that’s just how I roll.

As trying as the transition from LA Weight Loss to The Siegfried Group was, I had no idea of the challenges—and triumphs and setbacks and more triumphs—on the horizon.

Untitled (in progress)

There’s something about memories…you start remembering one or two things, and next thing you know those have triggered memories long forgotten, filed away in a drawer you’ve never since opened. Sometimes they’re things you’d rather not remember; things you’re just not too proud of. But I’m coming to the realization that all of what I went through—the adventures and misadventures, the two decades I spent hiding from God in a can of beer and, in the words of the late great Jimmy Buffet, “Living my life like a song”—have led to where I am today. I can’t regret any of it because all roads lead to here.

I had to go down those roads.

The farther I got down Memory Lane, the more I started thinking I could make a book out of this. I have no illusions that it’s going to be a bestseller, and I just don’t care. I think my story may be something my grandkids and great grandkids can read after I’m gone. Maybe it’s something my friends and family will read while I’m still around. Maybe it will be a blessing to someone who needs inspiration to see that there’s only one way to go from rock bottom, and that’s up.

From "Ain't Been No Crystal Stair: A Memoir"

I was only twelve the first time I had to wring a chicken’s neck, and I was terrified.

I mean, I’d seen it done plenty. Living in rural Hephzibah, Georgia (in Burke County, a stone’s throw south of Augusta, a stone’s throw west of the South Carolina border), I was no stranger to the macabre spectacle of chicken-killing or hog-butchering. My grandfather was a master at both: He could break a chicken’s neck before the chicken even knew it was in trouble, and his hammer never failed to hit the soon-to-be-eaten hog directly between the eyes.

I’d grown up planting, pruning, and picking collard greens, cabbage, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, onions, bell peppers, and okra. Like many a Black family in the Deep South, our lives revolved around “working the land.” After all, we’d been doing it for generations. At least these days we were doing it for ourselves, providing food not just for our own dinner table but the tables of our neighbors.

I’d only been two weeks old when I was sent to live with my paternal grandparents, Margaret Brady Lockhart (she was always Grandma Bunch to me) and Isaiah “Tut” Lockhart (Grandpa Tut). My mother, Kim, had only been sixteen when she had me, and neither she nor my father, Isaiah, were ready to be parents.
Although I still saw them—my father several days a week, my mother most weekends—I was my grandparents’ charge to keep.

Looking back, it was a magical childhood, and I was a happy little girl. I don’t recall a time when I ever thought of us as “poor.” We were too busy to think about such things.

From "I Want to Believe"

This period was a turning point for me on a few levels: Firstly, school politics gave me a glimpse into how government works. At least how the U of M-Dearborn student government worked. I also honed my public speaking skills—the university was quite keen on showcasing their new Interdisciplinary Studies program, so I was asked to give speeches for alumni and community members at various dinners and events.

It was at one of these functions that I learned an important lesson the hard way. There was a fancy luncheon, attended by several hundred alumni and business leaders, after which I was set to deliver a speech. I’d wanted to believe that could eat chicken cordon bleu without getting it all over my nice silk tie. I was mistaken. I’d then wanted to believe that the stain might come out with a little water, applied at the men’s room sink. Of course, as I said, it was a silk tie, so I was wrong again.

Okay. That may not seem like a particularly important lesson, but it was for me. To this day, I never go to an important function without a spare tie in my pocket.

Untitled (in progress)

My grandfather didn’t have a “call-in” radio show. Telephones—like electricity or even running water—were very scarce in rural Ireland in the 1930s. So his listeners would write in with their ailments, often including a little money (also pretty scarce) in the envelope. My grandfather would then send them a homemade concoction of whiskey, cayenne pepper, molasses…I don’t know what the exact ingredients were, but you get the idea. Along with this “snake oil,” he’d provide instructions on how to use it—a short prayer or invocation that provided the psychological impetus needed to make the snake oil work.

And it often did.

You may think it sounds like my grandfather was a conman. Not at all. If his “cures” hadn’t had some positive effect, if they simply never worked, he would’ve been run out of town on a rail. Or worse. Rather, he was well-respected and often revered. He’d managed to stumble upon what is now known by psychologists as the “placebo effect.”

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