Guiding Writers in Reflecting on Good Times and Bad

This post is the sixth in a series-in-progress by company president Megan St. Marie about heirlooms and objects related to her family history that she keeps in her office to inform and inspire her work at Modern Memoirs.

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Megan St. Marie’s great-grandparents Anastasie “Tazzy” Delia Raymond Lambert and Alfred “Fred” Damian Lambert celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, 1955

I recently wrote an editorial letter to a client, encouraging him to say more about his wife in his memoir. The two met as teenagers and have been together for over 50 years. It seems clear from his narrative that he adores her and that she has played a big role in supporting him in his success as a businessman. Even though his memoir is mainly focused on his career, that sense of adoration made me very curious about the woman he married. I want to know more about her, and I’m guessing that she’d be moved by what her husband has to say about her. However, this client may choose not to add more detail about his wife’s life and their marriage, and that’s absolutely fine. We take our tagline, “Your Memoir, the Way You Want It,” seriously at Modern Memoirs, and I respect a person’s wish to protect others’ privacy even as they share much about their own lives through their writing. It’s a fine line to walk. But, oh, how I love a good love story!

“The Story of the Elopement” by John A. Lennox, a print of which hung in Tazzy and Fred Lambert’s home and is now in Megan St. Marie’s office at Modern Memoirs

My Modern Memoirs office is filled with mementos from ancestors’ and relatives’ love stories, including one to which I can only tangentially lay claim as family history. My uncle Steve Lambert recently gave me a framed picture from an 1897 edition of The London News, which hung in the home of my great-grandparents Alfred “Fred” Damian Lambert (1882‒1963) and Anastasie “Tazzy” Delia Raymond (1886‒1971). Entitled “The Story of the Elopement,” this print of a painting by John A. Lennox has a great narrative quality, inviting the viewer to speculate about the story the painter was trying to tell. An older man in the painting looks upset, his posture rigid as he stares out a window with his back to the room, while a young woman sits with her head on the table in front of her, weeping. Is this an angry father and his daughter after her elopement? To me, that seems likely, but there is no accompanying text to offer the precise details of what transpired between these two characters and the others in the composition.

“The Reconciliation” by John A. Lennox

A bit of online research by staff Genealogist Liz Sonnenberg revealed a companion image called “The Reconciliation,” by the same artist, which ran in The London News soon after this first picture was published. In it, the same cast of characters is present, and the scene looks relaxed and joyous. Whatever upset the elopement caused in the first painting seems resolved in this second scene. I ended up wondering: Why did my Lambert great-grandparents keep that first print in their home? What did they make of the domestic drama it depicts? Did this scene make them reflect on their own marriage? Or others’ marriages in their family? And, did they ever see the second picture of a happy reconciliation?

A copy of the 1905 marriage license of Anastasie “Tazzy” Delia Raymond and Alfred “Fred” Damian Lambert

The wedding photo of Megan St. Marie’s paternal grandparents, Homer Raymond Lambert and Lucienne Marie Laroche Lambert, 1936

I know that Fred and Tazzy did not elope, and in fact, I know of no stories of elopement in my family history (though I have to imagine there were some). One rather humorous family story that I did hear about the beginning of a marriage concerned my Lambert grandparents. Fred and Tazzy’s son, my grandfather Homer Raymond Lambert (1908‒1974), married my grandmother Lucienne Marie Laroche (1915‒1986) on October 7, 1936. They ended up having what might be considered the exact opposite of an elopement when her parents accompanied them on their honeymoon to the mountainous area north of the St. Lawrence River in Québec. After many months of supervised courtship in their rural, Catholic, Franco American community, this was not the romantic post-nuptial getaway my grandfather, in particular, had envisioned. As those events were recounted over the years, my grandmother would say that her parents just wanted to visit relatives along the way, while my grandfather reportedly countered that they could have done so some other time—any other time.

Wedding cake toppers used by Tazzy and Fred Lambert at their 1905 wedding

Megan and Sean St. Marie cut their wedding cake, decorated with the same cake toppers used by Fred and Tazzy Lambert at their 1905 wedding, October 11, 2014

These grandparents were married for just under 38 years, until Homer died in 1974, while Fred and Tazzy’s marriage lasted for nearly 58 years until Fred’s death in February 1963. Perhaps my favorite heirlooms from a family love story are the wedding cake toppers Fred and Tazzy used at their 1905 wedding. When my husband, Sean, and I married in 2014, we used those little figurines on our cake, too. Then last summer, I brought them to a family reunion where they decorated a cake I ordered to surprise my Aunt Molly and Uncle Hank Lambert with a cake to mark their 50th wedding anniversary. Since we married later in life, Sean and I will need to live well into our 80s and 90s, respectively, to reach such a milestone in 2064, but it would be so special to use the toppers again that year. For now, they’re protected in a pretty blue box on a shelf in my office, out of reach from my small children, who are frequent after-school visitors.

Fred and Tazzy Lambert’s wedding cake toppers decorate a 50th anniversary cake for Megan St. Marie’s aunt and uncle Molly and Henry “Hank” Lambert, 2022

The strength of Uncle Hank and Aunt Molly’s marriage has always been apparent to me, and family lore seems to confirm that Fred and Tazzy were devoted to each other, as were Homer and Lucy; but the longevity of a marriage is not necessarily an indication of its happiness. There are also stories of sad marriages and divorce in my family history, as well as those of estrangement between grown siblings, and other heartaches. It’s easy for me to encourage a client like the one I mention in the first paragraph of this piece to share more about an adored spouse; the work of guiding authors in writing about ex-spouses or estranged relatives is harder. When I’ve tried to help memoir and family-history writers decide how or if to write about strained, severed, or otherwise painful family relationships, I start from a place of empathy that arises from my own experiences of witnessing or hearing the hard family stories in addition to the happy ones.

No one gets married hoping to divorce, any more than a parent looks at their children and imagines a day when they won’t be on speaking terms. While cautioning clients against any risk of libel, my rule of thumb in guiding them editorially in writing about not just the good times, but the bad, is to consider the intentions behind the words they write, as well as their intended audience. If they are in the midst of a scene like the tumult depicted in “The Story of the Elopement,” do they hope their books will promote an eventual reconciliation? If not, what do they hope to achieve by not just writing about, but publishing, their reflections on painful family dynamics? If they imagine their children and grandchildren reading their books, what do they aim for those readers to gain from difficult family stories—beyond knowledge of the fact that virtually every family has challenges of one sort or another?

Writing about one’s life, including marriages, divorces, estrangements, and reconciliations, can bring about perspective, clarity, and sometimes even healing. Ultimately, I hope that all of our clients will write and publish their stories in ways that will bring them and their readers fulfillment and pride, joy and peace—now, fifty years from now, and for generations to come.

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Reflections from Modern Memoirs Client Robert G. Dillard, M.D.

Robert G. Dillard, M.D. published his book entitled My Life as a Neonatologist with Modern Memoirs in 2021. This Assisted Memoir took seven months from the day he first contacted us to the day books arrived on his doorstep. We asked Dr. Dillard to reflect on what the publication process was like for him, and what it has meant to share his book with others.

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1. Neonatology is a medical specialty focused on the care of newborn infants. You began your 40-year practice in the field in the early 1970s, just as a new treatment was developed that revolutionized the management of babies with breathing problems. In the preface, you describe your memoir as “a personal history of those four decades,” and as “a recollection of my professional experiences over time.” What was your goal in writing a memoir focused solely on your work life, as opposed to one about your personal life, too?

Robert Dillard: My primary goal was to document the historical advances in neonatology. I was lucky enough to become a neonatologist and experienced in real time many of the developments in my specialty. For a variety of reasons, being a physician requires maintaining a distance between one’s personal and professional life; therefore, I made a conscious decision only to write about my professional life.

2. What was one of the most rewarding events of your career?

Robert Dillard: A new treatment of a condition called respiratory distress syndrome, the most life-threatening problem that premature infants developed, became prevalent in neonatal intensive care units while I was a general pediatrician in the U.S. Army. When I begin my first job as a neonatologist upon leaving the Army, I was overwhelmed by the survival of babies with this condition. They were being treated with a radically new approach called continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP). Because of the success of the new treatment, the pediatric subspecialty of neonatology began to flourish. One of the greatest compliments I continue to receive is from parents who express their thanks for the healthcare I provided for their children. Because of that care, many of these parents have become grandparents.

3. In your book, you describe several people who inspired and mentored you by example, including a surgeon who was “the epitome of the compassionate physician,” and a faculty member who “combined clinical brilliance with caring” like no other. What potential role can a memoir play in mentorship—in guiding and teaching students?

Robert Dillard: The process of becoming a physician is a long and complex one. More than any other profession, substantial human interaction and the learning that comes from it are the cornerstones of the education of a doctor of medicine. A physician’s memoir can give the reader an introduction into the role that such interaction must play in any successful physician’s practice.

4. You donated copies of your memoir to Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where you taught first-year students in your retirement. What feedback have you received from those readers, or others?

Robert Dillard: I’ve not been involved in teaching medical students for a number of years and have, therefore, not received feedback from them. However, a former colleague of mine who works closely with the neonatology fellows at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine has decided to make my book required reading for first-year fellows so that they might have a better understanding of past challenges in the field of neonatology. Feedback from other readers has been positive. I was pleasantly surprised that my non-medical friends said that my book was easy to understand, and they were fascinated at the speed of progress in such a young specialty.

5. Yours was an Assisted Memoir, meaning you sent us your written manuscript, and we edited it at the level you wished, maintaining the authenticity of your voice. We then continued to work closely with you through the design and printing phases. What did you learn about yourself as a writer through this process? Did anything surprise you at any step of the way?

Robert Dillard: As a professor of pediatrics at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, I was expected to “publish or perish,” as they say. I have always enjoyed writing, and have been accused on more than one occasion of being a frustrated English teacher. I honestly can say that I didn’t learn anything more about myself, but I enjoyed immensely remembering my professional life. Professional medical writing is primarily objective and factual. Writing my memoir provided an opportunity to give my perspective on challenges and accomplishments in neonatology. I was able not only to give factual information, but also to share personal anecdotes both heartwarming and tragic. I believe this enables the reader to feel a personal connection to a profession that I cherish and believe has made a difference in the world.

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A Comic, a Bomb, and an Essay: Finding Stories in My Abuela’s Stuff

A blog post by Publishing Intern Emma Solis

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Sunday picnic in the pine forest. My abuela, Sefita Beceiro, is the young girl drinking from a cup, circa 1950

During a recent visit to my abuelos’ small house in Lubbock, Texas, my mom told my abuela she could throw away a comic I drew in the third grade. The comic features an alien who tells a girl that invading Earth is his “duty,” and the girl falls over laughing because she heard him say “doodie.” As soon as I developed the capacity for embarrassment (and better humor), this cartoon’s perpetual place hanging up on the fridge began to taunt me. Before every visit, I hoped, even prayed, that she’d have thrown the thing out.

“No!” Abuela scolded my mom when she brought it up. “I don’t throw anything. I never throw anything.” Despite the cringeworthy cartoon, my abuela’s penchant for “never throwing anything” has always made me treasure our visits. Each one would yield a new and exciting artifact of the (not-so-distant) past, unearthed from an odd closet or drawer or pile for my siblings and me to inspect: a pair of jeans my mom wore in the 1980s, with so many giant holes she could barely work out how to put them on; a Walkman; my aunt and uncles’ school records and spelling books; a high school yearbook signature teasing my mom, “Can’t wait to see you with kids!”

Most recently, while digging through some utterly unremarkable files and manila folders, I found a college essay my Uncle Carlos wrote as an undergrad. It wasn’t a dry research paper; it was a story I had never been told. In it, he writes about visiting his own grandparents in Spain as a teenager in the 1980s, when they received a panicked call from an aunt saying, “Get out of the apartment! The Communists planted a bomb on the statue of Francisco Franco!”

The family rushed to the window to see. Sure enough, the statue of Franco mounted on horseback in the square below had forty to fifty sticks of dynamite strapped to each of the horse’s legs. Someone was called to disarm them, but in what my uncle called the “Spanish style,” that person didn’t arrive until three hours later due to a long lunch and nap. And, in “especially Spanish moods,” my family gathered on the balcony with coffees after lunch and watched the process with binoculars instead of evacuating.

After I told her about finding this paper, my abuela revealed a beautiful, disorganized photo album I hadn’t ever seen before. It’s one thing to know that my family lived through significant historical events in Spanish history, but it’s something more to see my relatives as they wanted to be seen in that era: the clothes they wore, the beach they loved, and the traditions they continued, like Sunday picnics in the pine forest. My abuelos’ immigration to America meant that I didn’t grow up around many of my Spanish relatives. Seeing those pictures and hearing stories about them helped mend this rift of connection; it almost made me feel like I was there, too.

My great-grandaunt Sara, circa 1930s

My abuela as a young girl (middle) with her parents in the foreground and other relatives, circa 1950

My granduncle Juan Manuel (left) with his parents and my abuela’s in-laws, circa 1960s

My great-grandmother Pura (short for Purificacion) playing guitar, date unknown

A “liminal space” describes a space that is transitional, derived from “limen” in Latin, which means “threshold.” Reading my uncle’s essay and looking at the photos in my abuelos’ house, itself a melange of Old-World traditions and American icons, made me feel like I occupied a blurred threshold between times and places; somewhere they seemed to overlap. Because Abuela “never throws anything,” it was as if layers of time built up in her house, accumulating evidence of my family’s lives on two continents, like a geologic cross-section of the Earth, that showed me its entire history at once.

The fact that my abuela keeps so many objects around has let my family tell stories that might otherwise have been forgotten or lost. Sometimes I worry about whether my future kids and grandkids will be able to experience the same thrill of re-discovery, because all of my pictures (and most of my music, some of my books, and many other things) are digital and therefore impermanent and intangible. A photograph or essay in hard copy can be destroyed or get lost, yes, but barring such occurrences, it can be rediscovered by anyone willing to go looking, leading to sudden, unexpected connections to the past.

So, I’m going to try to live out (within reason) my abuela’s mantra: “Never throw anything!” You might say I’ve come to think of this as a duty.

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Reflections from Modern Memoirs Client Roland Parent

Roland Parent published his book entitled Sentimental Voyage: A Maritime Memoir with Modern Memoirs in 2021. This Assisted Memoir took about one year and five months from the day he first contacted us to the day books arrived on his doorstep. We asked Parent to reflect on what the publication process was like for him, and what it’s meant to share his book with others.

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1. What was your main goal in undertaking this project?

Roland Parent: My main goal was to let my readers know what their grandfather (and great-grandfather) did that he enjoyed so much. I love to read, fiction and non-fiction equally. Furthermore, because of my lifelong love for the culture of the sea, I especially like reading memoirs of former master mariners and others equally passionate about that subject. Since my life’s experience is so much different than anyone else in my family tree, and since no others in the family have written their life stories, I decided I could do that. What better way to let future generations know what going to sea and ship handling were really like in the 20th century, when there is a distinct chance that those professions may be replaced with automation in the future.

2. In the introduction to your book, you wrote, “This is not a sea story, nor a logbook, history book or autobiography, but rather a personal remembrance of much of what I hold dear from a life in, around and upon ships and the sea.” How did this approach help you write?

Roland Parent: Most of what I wrote was pretty much from memory. Thank God, my long-term memory is still with me, as my short-term memory at this age seems often to be in question. Among seagoing persons, past and present, telling sea stories often humorously involves hyperbole or exaggeration, whereas a logbook is a precise written record of a voyage. I view history books and autobiographies as much more highly researched than a memoir, and void of factual errors. I certainly tried to avoid errors in my writing, but expect that a few may have crept in. My research was usually regarding ship histories or other people’s lives that touched my own so to avoid any errors on those subjects.

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“What better way to let future generations know what going to sea and ship handling were really like in the 20th century...”

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3. Your career included experience as a ship’s officer and twenty-five years as a maritime pilot. In your book, you described striving to strike the right balance between being “too dry, long or repetitious,” and writing with affection about your profession. What helped you to accomplish this goal? How has reader feedback affirmed your efforts?

Roland Parent: My concern was to entertain and inform my readers, not to bore them with esoterica about ships and model building, and I wanted my readers to read the book to its conclusion. This was challenging because sometimes my drafts were way too long. Professional editing from Modern Memoirs provided big help in that department. Reader feedback has been extremely satisfying, but I expect some have not read the entire book yet. I find feedback often relates to certain chapters. For example, family members like “The Family Voyage,” college friends like “Cadet Days,” model collector friends like “Ship Modeling: My Art Form.” I have had no negative feedback. My hard work has been affirmed and rewarded.

4. You are an avid reader of maritime books, as well as a sea traveler, ship model builder, and collector of maritime art. How did you choose from such a rich store of information, experiences, and objects to “curate” this memoir?

Roland Parent: This was challenging because I could have written much more. Choosing favorites is difficult, but in a sense that is what I had to do. My favorite ships to pilot, favorite ship models, favorite authors and artists, and favorite historical figures (Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt come to mind as I write this answer) seemed like a logical progression.

5. You said that your memoir is longer than originally intended. How did the project evolve from start to completion? Do you have any tips for other writers contemplating similar projects?

Roland Parent: The project started with inspiration from other memoirists and by writing individual essays on historical ship subjects. Insistence from one particular personal friend to “write down” many of the stories we shared with each other was a great motivation. The project evolved slowly, starting with a simple outline and ideas for chapter headings. There was much downtime with three chapters remaining unwritten until the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. With extra time on my hands, I had what I needed to go to work and complete the book. Some of my favorite tasks on the whole project were creating chapter titles and selecting the quotations under each chapter heading. I also tried to pay special attention to the first and last sentences of each chapter, with a fair amount of success I believe. The book’s title was in my mind for years prior to writing. I also thought briefly about including a maritime glossary and index but decided not to due to the extra length. I wanted a professional looking book with proper hardcover binding and a nice dust jacket. I owe much gratitude to Modern Memoirs for the editing process and the lovely, finished product that far exceeded my expectations.

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July in Vermont

I've been working on a collection of vignettes about my grandmother, who was known as “Big Mama” by all of her grandchildren. She was originally a Southerner, but as a child, I spent time with her in Vermont every summer.

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The blueberry field is at the top of a hill at the end of a dirt road. It stretches for miles to your young mind. You carry your little grey tin pail with its semicircle handle. Your grandma walks beside you, more slowly on her short legs.

Big Mama holds a blue-and-white enamel bowl, she’s wearing a flowery nylon house dress. You reach the middle of a field where there’s a great pile of dark-gray boulders. You’ve heard in the past it was a turret and wish so much that it still was, just as in the fairytale stories. But the boulders lie scattered, surrounded by blueberry bushes, knee-high.

Big Mama bends forward, her dress goes up in the back, and she samples a few berries.

“Lawd, don’t these taste gooood!”

You scan the area for the thickest, bluest bushes. The wild berries are tiny—smaller than peas, bigger than juniper berries. You taste along the way, handfuls come off easily in one tug of a bush. The first few minutes are the loud plunks, just like in the story Blueberries for Sal. “Kerplunk.” Then they get quieter and quieter as the bottom of the pail fills with soft dark blue. You keep moving every few minutes, sure that the next bush has more than this one.

Big Mama sits in the middle of the field and doesn’t move her spot but once or twice. She is part of the hillside, she’s not talking (that’s strange!), she picks and picks right there until her bowl is full. The field stretches out around her—she’s a painted boat in a blue-green sea.

Maybe an hour, maybe less or more. Then she hoists herself up to her feet with a little groan.

“Ah ’clare these are the purtiest berries ah ever did see.”

Time to go home, you walk over to her, compare pails—she always has more, even though you covered more area. The walk home is easy downhill, but you hold the precious pails with care. Spilling any berries is cause for great remorse and even tears.

These days are filled with blueberry pancakes, blueberry syrup, blueberry pie, blueberry cobbler, blueberry jam, and the favorite—blueberry teacake with sugar on top.

It’s July in Vermont.

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An Ambiguous, Thoughtful, Quirky Little Guy: The Story Behind the Modern Memoirs Logo

A blog post by Publishing Intern Emma Solis

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Lineup of Modern Memoirs book spines with logos, roughly ordered from earliest to newest

Current Modern Memoirs logo, using Futura font

“What is our logo?”

This was one of the first questions I asked when I started my internship at Modern Memoirs. Design plays a huge role in the company’s work on client books, which is why I found the logo, which creates the very first “story” of the company Modern Memoirs in the minds of potential clients, so intriguing. I had to know: how was it created or chosen? And how is it effective?

I went right to the source to find answers by reaching out to company founder, Kitty Axelson-Berry. Kitty shared that at the very beginning of Modern Memoirs’ existence in the mid-1990s, she experimented liberally with marketing materials. “I went off in a lot of different directions, trying this, trying that. What was going to work for this business?” she said. It was immediately apparent to me that while Kitty is deeply cognizant of the power of design, she never treated it as a dull obligation or a staid intellectual exercise. She even hand-painted watercolor business cards sporting two cherubs, but she wasn’t quite satisfied with the imagery. When I asked if she’d had artistic training, Kitty protested, “Oh, no, no, no. I just like to have fun!”

Early business card with die-cut logo, one of Kitty Axelson-Berry’s design experiments

Kitty next told me that around the time she was starting up the company and experimenting with the cherub paintings, her then-brother-in-law established a marketing firm. He offered to create a free logo for Modern Memoirs as a sample of his work and came up with a design that has stood the test of time. The logo, which Kitty affectionately dubbed the “thoughtful image,” or “little guy,” was perfect. Though it would be tweaked slightly as time went on, and Kitty would continue experimenting with the image—even creating die-cut business cards, for example—the logo has stayed basically the same for over twenty-seven years.

Early Modern Memoirs logo, using the font Copperplate Gothic

In the logo, a seated figure with short, curly hair wears a loose garment around the hips, and hunches over with knees bent. Kitty said she loved the image from the start for its “androgynous” quality. “This was in 1994, when all ‘cis’ meant was ‘coated on one side,’ in reference to a kind of paper stock,” she explained. Kitty regarded the image as a universal human figure, evoking the variety of life stories published by Modern Memoirs. Furthermore, despite its evocative universality, the logo is not merely a direct pictograph; it may communicate something slightly different to each viewer. Its ambiguity may help draw someone in for a longer look, too.

Logo in purple and yellow, used in early brochure

As for the colors, Kitty loved the purple-and-yellow palette designed by an early freelancer for a Modern Memoirs brochure but wondered whether the colors made the company look “respectable” enough. For a time, she switched to a more sober navy-and-yellow palette, before returning to the original. “The colors are a little bit soft, a little unusual in a quirky way, and it turned out that we had a lot of clients who wanted quirky. And those were the people that we got along with so beautifully, anyway.”

Modern Memoirs published book using Celtic-style font Rieven on the cover

Modern Memoirs published book using Western-themed font Durango on the cover

Fonts, too, are deeply significant, through their histories and effects on the reader. For branding consistency, Kitty eventually settled on Copperplate Gothic, a stately 1901 font made in Massachusetts, for all displays of the Modern Memoirs name. More recently, the company changed to Futura, a sleek, ultra-modern font also chosen for the lunar plaques placed on the moon by Apollo 11. Our discussion of the logo fonts led Kitty to describe her search for special fonts for clients’ book covers that would personally connect to the author’s memoir or family history; for instance, why not Rieven (a Celtic-style font) for a book about a Scottish family, or Durango font for a westward migration tale?

Ultimately, although it may seem as if everything just fell together naturally to create the Modern Memoirs logo, Kitty had a strong vision and a willingness to experiment. She knew she wanted to stand out a bit and attract the clientele she most enjoyed: the ones who wouldn’t mind a bit of quirkiness.

Like a good logo or palette, a well-made book may look natural, as if no work went into it at all; the reality is anything but! The exterior and interior fonts, leading, dimensions, paper, colors, and cover materials all tell a story—the very first story that the brain formulates before reading a single word of text. (See “Material Matters: A Blog Post by Lauryn Small” for more on this topic.) You might pick up a book and think intuitively, “This cover is leather; it reminds me of a big, old, comfy armchair.” Or, “This cover imagery looks gentle; I think the contents will be soothing.” Ideally, when readers hold a book in hand, they get a sense of how beauty and function intertwine seamlessly, as the physical book works with the text to create the full memoir, the instrument that illuminates the narrator as surely as a logo can evoke the core qualities of a business.

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