Some three decades ago, a college student named Lisa chose as a thesis project an oral history of her grandfather, Max Leavitt. The completed project was distributed to Max's descendents and no wider.

In 2022, one of these descendants discovered this website. Max was born and raised in Wysokie Litewskie. Would we be interested in publishing Max's story in some form?

Of course!

The thesis turned out to be a very complex interweaving of narrative, interview dialog, even a pseudo-script of a comedic exposition of some events in Max's life. Material taken from correspondence and oral communications among the family members. The Leavitt family were dedicated and prolific communicators.

How to present the material in a completely different format and for a much wider audience? Challenging!

The thesis contained little about Max's life in Wysokie Litewskie; Max didn't reminisce a lot about his youth. Could Max's character after emigrating to the U.S. be informative? That was the hope.

Ordinarily, the often-messy and too-often-lengthy process of transmuting content to the web would be done behind the scenes. Max's family didn't worry about that: let the process be completely transparent. So: here it is, the current state-of-preparation, stage-directions for next steps in ALL CAPS. Watch this space to see what happens next.

 

I never knew my Wysoker ancestors, either directly or through my Wysokie-descended mother. So I mused to Max's family: could I adopt Max as my Grandfather? Of course!

--Henry