With Thanksgiving coming up, we’d like to acknowledge just a few of all who have encouraged us in our Voices of the Violet Crown community/history project, especially since 2007:

Neighbors, friends, and family, who purchased copies of our film A Community Mosaic and book From Abercrombie to the Violet Crown, and Crestview Shopping Center businesses that helped sell them—Crestview Barber Shop, Crestview Beauty Salon, and Crestview Pharmacy.

Texas Oral History Association, for acknowledging our project and film A Community Mosaic with the Mary Faye Barnes Award for Excellence in Community History Projects, presented November 14, 2009, during the Violet Crown Arts Festival. (Thanks to my sister, Laura Kay Romano, for sending the beautiful flowers, right.)

Friends of Brentwood Park, whose support helped us conduct oral history interviews of FOBP leaders and donors and honorees of dedicated trees in Brentwood Park in 2010 and to create the film We Planted 115 Trees in 2011.

Richard and Sharon Hanson Charitable Fund, which helped make our website a reality in July 2011.

Violet Crown Community Works, whose support between 2007 and 2011 helped us conduct oral history interviews, create the film A Community Mosaic, duplicate our history booklet From Abercrombie to the Violet Crown, and begin work on our website.

We’re grateful for the kind words and encouragement of those willing to share their stories and those who find value in them. Our lives have been enriched by listening to our neighbors, and we are grateful the experience has been meaningful to them. We hope their stories give you a deeper knowing of our neighborhood.

We especially want to thank our neighbor John Carlson for asking us this question after our interview with him and his wife Judy in 2009: “So, what will you do now with what you recorded?” The conversation that followed encouraged us to continuing moving beyond our original intention, which was to simply do oral history interviews, share them with interviewees’ families, and preserve them as DVDs and transcriptions in the Austin History Center. We soon found new ways to share the stories we had recorded, through articles in the Brentwood Neighborhood Association newsletter (special thanks to Don Leighton-Burwell, John Halaburt, and Diane Larson) and Crestview Neighborhood Association newsletter (special thanks to former editors Kat Correa, Laura Cruzada, and Rick Von Flatern), our community/history exhibits for the Violet Crown Festival and other events, and this website.

We invite you to consider gathering, preserving, and sharing your own stories. One way is through the nonprofit StoryCorps, including its Great Thanksgiving Listen, held each year in November (although it could be done anytime!). Discover more resources on its “Participate” page here. Storycorps even has an app and great questions that you can use. The mission of StoryCorps is a good one:

To preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world. We do this to remind one another of our shared humanity, to strengthen and build the connections between people, to teach the value of listening, and to weave into the fabric of our culture the understanding that everyone’s story matters.

Thanks, as always, for visiting our website. We wish you and yours a very special holiday!

Susan & Rob Burneson