Here are some examples of remembrance storytelling in briefer form.
First is a short essay commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre in Beijing, China in 1989. © 2021 L.A. Evans:
Note: This was originally published on social media, so it is presented in short paragraphs to make it easier to read on device screens.
32 years ago I lost contact with a friend I made in the international music business.
Wang Min Xiang responded to a cold-call letter I sent to the China Record Conpany, an arm of the Chinese government with offices in Shanghai and Beijing.
Mr. Wang was the Import/Export Director of the Shanghai Branch, and although his English wasn’t perfect; it wasn’t broken, either.
Over 4 years of letter exchanges, telexes, and a few phone calls — he had to call me collect, from a payphone in his Shanghai apartment building (our conversations were brief at $6.50 per minute, but wonderful).– we had developed a true friendship.
Mr. Wang’s job allowed him to travel around the world, so he knew and loved how free countries felt to him. China was still rather primitive at that time, and was seeking trade opportunities around the world, so he was allowed to travel a lot.
I first met him in person in 1988, three years into our friendship.
His company had bought a booth at the Texas State Fair, and was sending a large delegation of executives, including the very elderly chief executive, to Dallas.
There was also a Chinese Intelligence Officer in the delegation to keep the others in line, and to keep them from defecting to the U.S.
Mr. Wang invited me to Dallas to meet him and his people. I arranged a radio interview with the public radio station in Dallas, during which a Chinese recording was played on American airwaves for the first time since 1947, an absence of 41 years.
I also hosted a tour of a new compact disc manufacturing plant that had been built in Plano, a Dallas suburb. China Records had its first CD plant in China under construction in Shanghai at that time.
It was during the drive from downtown Dallas to Plano to the extended stay hotel in Irving — when the intelligence officer allowed Mr. Wang to ride alone with me separate from the delegation — that Xiang — his first name that he asked me to call him — opened up to me about his life.
Xiang was an imposing man at 6′ 4″ tall, almost as tall as me, and he had a muscular, athletic build. He was the largest Chinese person I had ever met at that time. He told me that he was of Han ethnicity.
He was very friendly and very open about telling his life story.
He had three siblings, two brothers and a sister. When they were very young, his family was separated during Mao’s Cultural Revolution — they sent each child to different regions of China to grow up among strangers. He did not see his parents or siblings — his family — again for more than 12 years.
“It was tellible!,” he told me several times during that story, struggling to say “terrible” — the liquid consonants “R” and “L” are difficult for native speakers of Chinese to separate, since the only liquid in Chinese is a consonant that is a sound in between R and L.
Xiang learned English well enough to be assigned a job teaching English after he went to college. That’s what he did before he began working for the record company. That is also why I am fearful that the worst happened to him (see below).
Xiang was married and had a little girl. He showed me a picture he carried with him. She was about 3, and about as cute as cute comes.
The CEO had invited me to come with Mr. Wang back to their hotel for a traditional Chinese lunch, which other than rice, in no way resembled what Americans know as Chinese food. It was different, but good. I had no idea what I was eating.
The delegation had several rooms equipped with kitchenettes at the hotel — along with porn available on TV in each room and being watched by everyone — they were all men, Xiang was the youngest; most were in their 50s-60s, with the CEO pushing 80. They were transfixed – they had seen nothing like this in China.
After lunch, we talked business. I had impressed the CEO, and with Xiang as translator (only a couple of them understood English), we discussed some ways we could do business.
I had managed to overcome the natural distrustfulness for non-Chinese that is a part of Chinese culture.
They were interested in me becoming their exclusive distributor in the United States for their musical catalog, which included classical, Chinese Folk, and their interpretation/imitation of Western Pop Musics.
They had also invested in state of the art recording studios with a couple of huge Solid State Logic G Series Consoles, and were trying to attract projects to Shanghai to use them. The recording consoles each cost more than a half of a million dollars, and with the other studio equipment they had purchased and the facilities they had built, they had an estimated four million dollars invested in their studios. China Record Company needed help in booking and operating it — there weren’t many trained audio engineers in China then who knew how to use the equipment they had purchased and installed.
Over the next few months, Xiang and I worked over negotiating the details of both projects.
China Record Company in the meantime decided to relocate Xiang’s Import/Export Department to Beijing.
Xiang moved to Beijing in December 1988, but left his wife and child in Shanghai.
We continued to correspond until about April. Xiang did not respond to a letter I mailed him in late April.
In the meantime, crowds started demonstrating near the Monument to the People’s Heroes in downtown Beijing.
This started as a memorial march commemorating the death of a very elderly member of the Politburo, former General Secretary Hu Yaobang, who had passed away in mid-April. Hu had become a reformer in his later years, and although he was still a member of the Politburo, he had been stripped of his title of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party for advocating more democratic reforms and freedoms for the Chinese people.
The students loved Hu for this, and pretty soon the memorial gathering swelled into an enormous, ongoing demonstration of hundreds of thousands of people demanding democracy, many just ordinary Chinese citizens.
It was led by students — and teachers. My friend Wang Min Xiang had been a teacher, and he was living in Beijing.
I believe he was there, participating.
On June 4, 1989 — 32 years ago today — the Chinese government crushed ruthlessly thousands of people with army tanks and machine guns in Tiananmen Square.
I never heard from my friend Xiang again, and I was afraid of what might have happened to him — I stii fear the worst — and was more afraid to attempt to contact him out of fear for what they might do to him and his family if an American had tried to reach out to him at that time.
I can only remember him on this day.
I miss you, Xiang.
Second are remarks about an old friend posted to social media, about a gentleman who was a fixture in the Austin live music community, the late Willie Rader.
Willy Rader Eulogy (Facebook, June 15, 2020) – brief form. Posted to group: That’s Old Austin, Remember?
Old Austin lost someone special to our hearts.
Willy Rader.
I first met Willy at the Armadillo during the late 1970s and saw him there, either inside for the shows or out in the beer garden, almost every time I went, which was several times a month.
I saw Willy a lot when I worked at Steamboat in the mid-1980s, and even more while I was managing Fred Mitchim.
There were times here in Austin when I could not go out without bumping into Willy.
Willy was everywhere.
Now, he’s not.
Willy passed last week.
He was always smiling, gregarious, and almost always cheerful.
He was an artist and his primary media was photography, and he had a great eye for it.
He also worked as a stagehand, poster hanger, and his LinkedIn says he was at one time an EMT/paramedic.
The stories told about him at his memorial service yesterday morning were heartwarming and real.
My heart goes out to his brother Frank and the rest of Willy’s family.
Willy made a lot of friends in this life, had a lot of adventures and misadventures, and an awful lot of people remember him fondly.
I would call that a successful life, wouldn’t you?
My only regret is that I had not seen Willy since his jet black hair changed color, way, way, way too long of a time ago.
I really don’t want to have to say that about any more of my friends, dammit!
Let’s get together, talk. and remember shared experiences past and new ones now. We get so busy with our lives — I’ve been a nearly fulltime caregiver for the past 25 years — that we don’t see each other nearly enough.
And for all of you who know me only from what I post here, I would love to see you in person so we can share new experiences with each other.
Call someone today and remind them that you love them, please — while they can still answer the phone.
Rest in Peace, Willy.
Love,
Larry
P.S. Willy’s persona always reminded me a little of a cartoon character, Top Cat’s affable and always cheerful right-hand cat Benny the Ball.
Third is my Mom’s Eulogy speech. There were a number of eulogies given, mine was the last. She was 95 years young.
(Note on theme / motif — repetition of the word “always” towards the end is a reference to her favorite song, “Always” by Irving Berlin. The presentation of her service began with Ella Fitzgerald’s version of “Always” and finished with Bennie Goodman’s upbeat instrumental version of that song. There is also an inside joke that only people very close to her would get.)
The Eveready Bunny had nothing on my mom. She started going long before it did, and kept going and going and going and going. . .
I am Larry Evans, and I am the fourth of the four children – all boys, Bob, Dave, Gary and Larry – of Millie Evans and my dad Palmer Evans, her beloved husband of 57 years.
I was, and I remain, the baby of our family. For that reason, I never grew beyond being about three years old in her eyes, even though I am now pushing 58.
Mom probably gave me more individual attention than each of my brothers, since I was born 6 years after the four-year period over which they were born. She and my dad were very experienced parents of young children by then, and I think I had it pretty easy.
My brothers were all in school while I was very young, and Mom was a homemaker, one of the more difficult vocations one could have. She was always very skeptical of the career choice I made – I became a music professional in the business of helping musical artists develop their professional careers.
I have a passion for music.
About 15 years ago, I realized why – my dad had a beautiful baritone singing voice and played clarinet in his youth.
But that wasn’t it –there was something more that took me back to when I really was three years old.
My mom would sit me down in front of the family record changer (this was before they were called “stereos” or “turntables”), and she would set up a stack of records to play.
Much as some children were supervised by the television, I was supervised by the record player. I was fascinated watching it drop another record after the previous one had finished.
I was also fascinated by the music.
Mom loved to listen to music, often while she worked very hard making our home in a suburb of Philadelphia. I remember the sound of music in our home, whether popular music of the swing era – the music of her young adulthood – or Broadway show tunes, or classical.
Mom was particularly fond of the orchestral art music of composer Igor Stravinsky. Her favorite records were the ballet suites “The Rite of Spring” and “The Firebird Suite,” both of which she played over and over to me as a three year-old.
Here is one of these records – does anyone find this image rather disturbing? The worn adage “you can’t tell a book by its cover” – or a record by its sleeve – doesn’t apply to this album. {holds up cover of 1958 NY Philharmonic recording with spooky artwork)
The music is at least as disturbing as this picture, and Mom inflicted, er, imean, imprinted it on me repeatedly at three.
The work is very atonal, ragingly rhythmic, and extraordinarily intense – the Rite of Spring ballet’s 1913 Paris premier caused the audience to riot, after all.
And three-year old me loved it!
She also loved the “Firebird,” which although less cacophonous is no less intense; the finale of the Firebird Suite honors her as it accompanies part of the forthcoming video.
So when, as an adult, Mom got on me for following my passion in music, I had to tell her – it’s all your fault, Mom. ‘Cause it is.
As children growing up in between the towns of Newtown Square and Bryn Mawr northwest of Philly, we were allowed to range beyond the two acres my parents’ house sat on.
Often we would be out of shouting distance from the house, so Mom designed a calling system using the kind of whistle blown by football referees.
We had to listen carefully – one long whistle called Bob, two long whistles called Dave, three called Gary, and four called me. When short whistles blew rapidly, she was calling all of us at once. If we didn’t respond to being whistled in a timely fashion, we got in trouble.
As we got older, we responded without being whistled – I think mom was very clever training her children into Pavlov’s dogs this way. We always responded, whether called or not.
Who wouldn’t ? Our parents showed us what love means by showering us with it. Mom taught us well that the only way to create more love is to give it all away, that love is infinite and we all have an inexhaustible supply.
While my Dad was known to be the most patient man in the world, my mom taught us about being tolerant and open human beings.
We learned from her that people who appeared or acted differently than we did were to be valued just as much as we valued ourselves. She taught us to love and respect ourselves and others, and she was well ahead of her time in supporting the rights of women and other people who suffered from oppression.
When Mom and Dad started our family in the late 1940s, she was told to stop having children after Dave was born, due to the risk of a mismatch of the RH factor between her blood and her children’s blood that could threaten the life of both mother and child. She ignored that advice for Gary and me, and fortunately, neither of us had a mismatch.
In her later years, she was grateful that she stubbornly had forged ahead.
Mom bravely and directly faced, and overcame, the most trying and difficult thing a parent can experience: the death of her two eldest children, Bob in 1997 and Dave in 2014.
She came within a hairs’ breadth of losing Gary as well in 2008, when he was a few days away from death before getting a life-saving liver transplant at the Mayo Clinic in Florida, where she steadfastly refused to leave his bedside.
When Jill came into my life 22 years ago, Mom took her in and loved her as much as any of us. She was extraordinarily pleased that her baby had found his life partner, and she took Jill into our family as one of her own.
True, it was a challenge to live with both these strong-willed women under one roof – and it put me squarely in the middle – but she truly loved you, Jill. Always.
Mom was always there for us. Always.
Even though she is gone now, she will always be there, just like my dad, for the rest of my days, and maybe a little beyond. I will always hear her voice, and always feel her love for me. Always
Our original family of six is now down to two. I love you, Gary, and am so grateful to have you as my brother. Always.
But there is much more than just the two of us, for our family extends, and Mom taught us that our family includes our friends. Again, I am grateful. Always.
As for mom – she had something the Eveready Bunny never did have – jet assisted takeoff.
I love you mom, and thank you for all you’ve done for me, my brothers and the rest of our extended family and friends. We will always miss you. Always.
Thank you all for coming to honor and remember my mom, Millie Evans.