Cedar Mill Community Library unveils its newly completed oral history collection

The Cedar Mill Community Library, a member of the Washington County Cooperative Library Services, recently released the final five of 14 oral histories collected from local immigrants.

The oral histories tell the story of local immigrants from a personal perspective, and are available to the community by listening to online podcasts.

The idea of collecting oral histories began with the celebration of Oregon’s sesquicentennial and the Cedar Mill Community Library’s participation in the statewide Oregon Reads Project.

The Oregon Reads Project chose the book Stubborn Twig by Lauren Kessler to be part of a statewide reading program in libraries. Stubborn Twig focuses on immigration in Oregon, which inspired librarian Mark Richardson’s project to collect local oral histories.

Richardson, a young adult librarian at the Cedar Mill Community Library since 2004, began collecting oral histories earlier this year. Richardson contacted Sunset High School and developed a plan with history teacher Matt Hiefield to involve students in the interview process. Hiefield’s history students in the past have interviewed veterans and immigrants for school assignments, and this year, students helped Richardson gather the first nine oral histories.

“I contacted the high school and set up times to work with the students on their questions, then we met the local immigrants at the school, and I took the audio from those recordings while the students asked questions,” Richardson recalled.

Richardson figured “a way to support the Oregon Reads Project would be to get the high schools and kids involved.”

As far as the benefit of the oral histories to the community, Richardson claimed the podcasts have been another great medium to reach people in the area.

“There has been a positive response from the community as well as the people who participated,” Richardson said. “There was one speaker in particular who was really happy with all the programming about Japanese-American immigrants.”

The oral histories in podcast form also provide an outlet for alternative learners through listening and personal experience, rather than reading a standard textbook.

“Everybody is different, and finding different ways to reach the community in different areas is really valuable,” Richardson suggested. “It’s also a way to extend our programming longer; 15-minute-long podcasts allow people to use it whenever they can.”

Although Richardson often collected personal interviews that lasted nearly an hour, he tried to keep the focus on educational and historical aspects during the editing process.

“There are all these stories out there that people have, and to be able to put them together in a thematic way like this has been really nice,” he said. “My goal was to have information that high school kids could listen to or something teachers could use, such as interesting personal stories or stories with historical relevance.”

The final five oral histories were collected from the following local participants: Alice Kern, a survivor of the Holocaust; Chann Noun, a Cambodian refugee camp survivor; Elin Helene Simmons, a local resident of Swedish heritage; Chris Gniewosz, a Canadian immigrant of Polish heritage; and Rheinhart and Wilhelma Engelmann, World War II German immigrants.

“They are always looking for opportunities to share their story, and it was interesting for me to hear how some people would have a really good experience immigrating here while others would have a negative experience,” Richardson said.

All 14 podcasts are available online, accompanied by a short written biography of all the participants. The online podcasts allow anyone to listen and learn at anytime.

“(The collection) is a way for the immigrant speakers to continue their work and tell their story for other people,” Richardson said.

Not only do the oral histories provide excellent educational material for local schools, it reminds Beaverton residents of their own cultural ancestry. “Listening to the podcasts lets us remind ourselves again that almost all of us were immigrants here,” Richardson said.

To view the collection, visit www.cedarmill.plinkit.org/news-events/programs-cedar-mill/oral-history-project.html.