What's Your Story?

Please join other retirees in recording and saving the memories of a generation.

To collect and preserve the rich history of DePaul University, the DES initiated an Oral History Project and invites retirees to share their stories and memories through audio recordings. If you have ideas for story recordings, or are interested in sharing your memories, please contact Alice Farrell at afarrell@depaul.edu or 312-362-8822 to schedule a recording session.

If you would like to hear some of the retirees' stories already recorded click here and it will take to you the Office of Mission and Values website where the stories are available.

Helmut Epp Interviewed

"The Oral History Program at DePaul University is co-sponsored by the Office of Mission and Values and the DePaul Emeritus Society. The program seeks to use the oral history format to document the contributions made to DePaul University by its faculty and staff. Every faculty and staff retiree is invited to participate in this program at the time of their retirement. The length of an oral history interview is usually determined by the comfort level of the interviewee with the oral history format, and the impact of the person’s contributions to the university. Occasionally, the program does a themed set of interviews such as reminiscences about the impact of the great Chicago flood of 1992 on the university. In addition to the documentary and digital records possessed by the university’s archives, oral histories have the advantage of producing a more personal and conversational record that always provides a rich complementary record to more traditional formats. Together, these archived resources will contribute to the present generation’s responsibility to document the university’s history for posterity. The final oral history interviews are edited to maximize sound quality. Each interview is accompanied by a written transcript. In some cases, condensed versions of longer interviews are prepared, but in every case the integrity of the full impact of the dialogue between the interviewing historian and the interviewee is preserved."

The  above is the introduction to the Oral History section on the Mission and Values website.  In addition to the interviews provided by our retirees, Helmut Epp (who one day will be a member of the De Paul Emeritus Society!) has also been interviewed.  Because of his many years of service we thought you might enjoy hearing what others have said about his four decades at DePaul.  Click here to find out more about Dr. Epp.




Photo by Jeff Carrion, Reception 2012

New Oral Histories on DES Website

New Oral History interviews are now posted on the DES Website.  Please take a moment to listen to the stories of DePaul as seen through the eyes of four of our retirees:

• Doris Brown, Library
• Susan Kosinski,  Community and Government Relations
• H. Woods Bowman, Public Service Management
• George Flynn, Music

Click on Oral History Project to listen to the interviews.

Thanks to Doris, Susan, Woods and George for sharing their memories and thoughts about DePaul.  And, thanks to David Sims, interviewer, and Brian Cicirello, technical adviser, for making all of this possible.

More interviews will be posted over the coming months. If you would like to share your DePaul story, please contact David Sims at dsims@depaul.edu

Marlborough and DeGraff - Interviewed

Helen Marlborough and Kathryn DeGraff, recent DePaul Emeritus Society members, have shared their experiences, history and memories with us.  Thank you so much for participating in the DES Oral History Project.

To listen to the interviews, click here.

Thank you Fr. Udovic and Dave Sims for conducting the interviews.

Oral History Interviews Posted

The Oral History Project has been re-energized.  Several Oral History interviews were completed over the summer and have now been posted on the DES Website.  These additional interviews include recollections and remembrances of Dick Meister, Phil Kemp, Nancy Rospenda and Jerry Goldman.  To hear these Oral Histories click here.

This brings us to a total of 16 Oral History interviews.

We would love to gather the memories of all our DES members.  If you would like to be interviewed, please contact either Phil Kemp at pkemp@depaul.edu or Alice Farrell at afarrell@depaul.edu

When you go to the DES website, which looks like the image below, just click on the play button to hear the individual interviews.

Listen to DES members sharing their recollections by clicking below.

To listen to the interviews, click here.