Mary Gordon has been interviewing interesting people since a National Park Service anthropologist, Phil Holmes, suggested she interview Charlie Cooke, who some considered a hereditary Chumash chief. Phil referred to that work as oral tradition. In the same time frame, she interviewed many people on her cable TV show and as part of her responsibilities for a major corporation. Looking back, she wondered , Was this oral history? Well, aspects were. One day, Linda Valois, then managing archives for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, suggested she attend a SOHA conference. She did, found it welcoming and certainly worthwhile. One of her first reactions was, Am I an oral historian? She enjoyed meeting SOHA members, listening to their presentations, and talking with them at lunch and dinners out. Well, she said to herself, Maybe I am an oral historian. With her published biography about Charlie Cooke and all the lessons learned from that project, she began giving presentations herself. The first was a dramatization from Charlie’s story working with Julie Little Thunder. That punctuated the fact for her that not all historians are the same, that we all have much to learn from each other, and that she could fit in. Next she wrote a family business history and started giving workshops based on that experience from venues as diverse as an NPS amphitheater, to bookstores, to community center classroom settings.
Southwest Oral History Association 