Writing A Personal Biography

This is the introduction to a current project of mine: researching and writing the story of my father's life.

My father was 59 years old when he died from cancer. That seemed pretty old to me back in 1976 when I was just a teenager. But now that I’ve since crossed over the 50 mark (and then some) myself, well, it doesn’t seem so old at all. In fact, now it hardly seems fair that his life was cut short the way it was. Funny how time plays tricks like that.

It’s strange, too, how easily the details of one’s life can fade and fade until finally they disappear from memory altogether. In the case of my father I’ve seen those images and memories fade quite a bit already. I don’t want them to disappear for good. Then there is the fact that I never had the chance to sit down and talk with him about his life, his lessons learned, his memories kept, and the worries he had through it all.  And it makes me wonder what I might have learned about my own life from such a conversation? For these reasons I find myself wanting to be re-introduced to the man who once loomed so large over a young boy’s world. For these reasons I decided to dig a little deeper into the past.

Oh I remember him fondly and know enough to say with confidence what kind of man he was. No mystery there. But what about the countless little facts and personal circumstances that once made up much of his life? Sad to say, some of those bits and pieces are gone now, ‘lost to history,’ as they say. (That’s not to say he didn’t leave any record behind. Some surviving journals and family narratives were an invaluable source for much of what you are about to read.)

As for one of my memories, I can still hear him in the basement of our home at night, clattering away on his trusty old Remington typewriter, the keys firing off so rapidly it sounded like a tiny motor going through its paces down there. I didn’t know what he was writing or who he was writing to, but he certainly was writing. And so it is with that enduring sound in my mind that I now quietly tap on my computer keyboard what I have come to know to be the life story of my father, Clarence Stolt.