Documents, Stories & Oral History
Stories about our people in Swim Magazine and other national media and in LMSC & club newsletters are important to our archives. Meegan Wilson has led the effort to collect these stories and put them in a form for safekeeping and for display. We have stories about 223 prominent USMS people on our website.
The USMS Oral History began at the 1999 convention meeting chaired by Edie Gruender. Edie and Helen Bayly and others set up a booth at SC Nationals in Indianapolis in May to explain the Oral History and to encourage people to contribute. So far, 24 people have made contributions to our oral history.
There are several dozen more people about whom we'd particularly like to have a story. And we have a backlog of dozens of stories that need to be typed so we can use them in our digital archives. Volunteers are needed for typing the most important of these stories.
Marcia Cleveland and Dennis Wilson wrote letters to the most outstanding swimmers in their zone and got a great deal of response. Marcia's letter is first and Dennis's is below.
Dear (LMSC Loved-one),
We are looking for some strong women and men that go the distance.
In other words, USMS History and Archives Committee is looking to expand its current list of stories about Masters Swimmers. Most Masters swimmers like to talk, and when they get going, they often like to talk about themselves and their memories of swimming. We would like each LMSC to identify a few of their key people, (say 3-4 members) their "treasures", who have participated in USMS for a long time. From there, we need to have an LMSC or friend interview these "treasures" about their swimming. To help you create these stories we've put together several questions to get you started. Feel free to use these questions in whatever way suits you best. (Pun completely intended.) The attachment has all questions and information we think you may use. Please get in touch with XYZ and let him/her/me know what members of your LMSC you would like to participate in the project in 2002.
Best Fishes,
Whoever wants to sign this. (Maybe each Zone Rep from H&A should contact their LMSCs individually with this.)
Dear .....:
Hope your summer is going well and you're getting lots of swim time. We had a great annual swim meet here in Tulsa last week and missed seeing you Texas folks. But more important than the meet is a project I'm working on for the History & Archives Committee of USMS.
In case you haven't heard about it, they've developed a searchable website and are compiling the records, etc. for all of the USMS swimmers. I'm not much of a computer nut, but I've got to say that if you haven't seen it yet, you should - it's pretty neat. The address is www.usms.org/swimgold and click on Stories About Swimmers.
The reason I'm writing you about it is that they've selected 9 swimmers from our zone that they really want to have a profile on - and you're one of them. I've been asked to write it, but I need your help. I know we've both got a million other things to do, but I'm sending you a questionaire to pull together the basic facts. If you could take a quick minute and get that back to me (I've enclosed an envelope) I'll get it typed up and then call you for a quick chat in order to turn it into a profile. They also want a photo. A head and shoulders portrait of you in swimming attire is requested. You can either mail it to me and I'll return it or you can e-mail it to me if you would rather scan it and keep the original. I'm supposed to have these done in time for the convention which is only a month away, but I think with your help we can do it. Let me know what else I can do to help - and thanks!
Sincerely,
Dennis J. Wilson
The brochure created by Meegan Wilson, Marcia Cleveland and Meg Smath is available from the national office or can be downloaded from the web. If you would like to see or download a pdf file of our brochure, click here.
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