Everyone has a story to tell – and for that reason, Writer For Hire Pat Kramer has created the Lifelong Stories memoir writing service to capture the valuable memories our elders hold that we don’t want to lose.
Over the years, Pat has written memoirs for many business professionals – about their businesses, families, and personal values. In addition to preserving their legacies, these memoirs often bring family members together as they share in the reading of mutual memories.
Memoirs written by Writer For Hire include:
“The Rebel and the Rabbi’s Son,” Izzy Eichenstein’s memoirs of growing up in a Jewish Hassidic dynasty and choosing to leave the fold,
“My Life in Retrospect,” by an Los Angeles investment banker who was raised by a father who was Austin, Texas’ first Jewish motorcycle cop, and a mother, who had the distinction of being the first woman to attend business school at Boston University, his memoir is both a tribute to his parents and a legacy of his own life.
Senior Memoirs:
Memoirs of Julia Vera Keys, Catalina Island’s first woman pioneer, as related by her granddaughter Susan Keys;
Kim N., who was 21 years old when her Cambodian family were invaded by the Khmer Rouge soldiers and told to pack a 3-day supply of food and clothes. They then were marched deep into the jungle where they spent the next four years trying to survive with very little food and shelter and violent teenage soldiers, just looking for a reason to kill them.
Dorothy W., who spent four years of her childhood in a Japanese internment camp and later said those were some of the best memories she had of her childhood. Her father, a traditional Japanese patriarch was disappointed that his five children were all girls and made them work in the fields from the time they were able to walk.
Shirley F., a runway model in the 1930’s and the daughter of a New Jersey bootlegger. She and her boyfriend announced their engagement on the day Pearl Harbor was bombed and soon after their marriage, he was shipped off to fight in the war and didn’t return for four years.
Janette M., raised in Glasgow, Scotland in a dirt poor family with an alcoholic father who spent all that he earned in the bar. Often, she and her seven siblings would be sent to bed at 4 p.m. because there was no food to feed them dinner. They all slept in one bed and used coats donated by the church to stay warm with no sheets or blankets. Later, she married a man she only had two dates with and they moved to America to escape brutal poverty;
Vito D., was born on Long Island to a dysfunctional working class Italian family where everyone knew each other’s business. After realizing that he didn’t fit in to this structured environment, he fled to the “Big City” where he found a career that he enjoyed in the banking industry and went on to make that his life’s work;
Virginia W., raised on a 40-acre farm in Indiana before marrying her late husband, who would become an oil industry executive in California. Virginia’s memoirs describe her early life on the prairie, coming to California, raising her family, her life with and loss of her first husband and finally, a second marriage and the loss of her second husband. Throughout it all, there is a message of optimism and hope.
Pedro I., born in the Basque region of Spain, he came to America to be a sheepherder’s assistant in the mountains of Arizona before moving to Los Angeles and opening a fence-building company.
Family Memoirs: Additionally, Pat has written the Morochnick Family Memoir – a story that remembers each of her extended family members from four generations and their connections to the world.
Business Memoirs: Finally, Pat has written business memoirs, such as Ward Service History in Monrovia, California, depicting the evolution of its 90-year history. Ward Service is the 2nd oldest, family run auto business in California having survived economic ups and downs, changes in technology, the gasoline wars, and multiple relocations. This history was distributed to the media and to the 350+ people who attended its 90-year anniversary party in 2013.
If you want to write your memoir or know someone else’s that should be recorded, please contact Writer For Hire Pat Kramer at: [email protected].