On September 27, 2024, Modern Memoirs held a dinner at the Blue Heron Restaurant in Sunderland, Massachusetts to celebrate several milestones: the 30th anniversary of our company’s founding by Kitty Axelson-Berry; the 20th anniversary of Director of Publishing Ali de Groot’s employment; and the five-year anniversary of my purchase of the business with my husband, Vice President Sean St. Marie. In anticipation of the dinner, we sent a mailing to past and current clients, inviting them to reply with a “Paper Toast” to read aloud around the table.
I saved each card as it was returned to us, waiting to share them with the staff at our dinner. Honestly, as the weeks wore on, it was sometimes very hard to keep the Paper Toasts to myself since I knew how much they would mean to everyone. When the date finally arrived, colleague Emma Solis helped me hang the dozens of cards we’d received around the dining room as impromptu party décor. Then, following my own toasts to Kitty, Ali, and the rest of the staff, we each took turns reading clients’ Paper Toasts aloud to one another.
The effect was just what I’d hoped it would be: we felt our clients’ presence with us as we fondly recalled them and their projects, and we delighted in their reflections on their publishing experiences. Some messages were short and sweet, some were long and heartfelt, and one was even written in rhymed verse! All were deeply appreciated, and with thanks to Publishing Intern Lily Fitzgerald, who retyped each one for posterity, here is a sampling of Paper Toasts to Modern Memoirs, Inc. at 30 years:
Andy Stephens and family:
To thirty years of stories told,
of memories captured, hearts consoled.
To Kitty, who began this quest
in ’94, she gave it her best.
To Ali, with two decades strong
her passion and skill, helped everyone along
and Megan and Sean St. Marie, five years to cheer
for guiding this ship with vision so dear.
To all the staff, whose hearts and hands
have crafted books across our lands,
memoirs, genealogies, each line and page
brims in joy and wisdom, age to age.
Here is to the work you love to do
in the stories that bind us all, old, and new.
May Modern Memoirs thrive and grow
with good cheer, we raise our toast.
Hilde Wohl Adler: I chose Modern Memoirs in the first place because I read Kitty Axelson-Berry’s autobiography online and discovered she was once Kathy Lebow and a student in my seventh-grade physical education class back in West Hempstead [NY].
The road was smooth from the start. She helped me produce a fabulous professional looking book, The Way It Was, about my life from 0 to 10 in Nazi Germany. And then after Kitty left, Ali helped me with a very different project, I Am NOT Old Enough, about moving into a retirement community. Both Kitty and Ali gave me gentle guidance while allowing me to keep my voice. Both experiences were incredibly meaningful, productive, and fun!
