History Speaks
By Dan Brent, Citibank

Last week our “Priority Services” people invited me to a lunch party they were having for some fifteen-year veterans. The occasion got the “old-timers” reminiscing about the old days and some of the funny or peculiar things that happened.

There was the time at our old site when paper files were concentrated in cabinets in a corner of the second floor – until the first floor ceiling began to fold down under the weight. And the time when the atrium art piece, which was an enormous collection of ceramic wings, suspended from the three-storey ceiling, came crashing down. Happily no one was hurt and everyone was happy to see the ugly thing gone. Or the era when we ran out of parking space and the company inaugurated valet parking as a solution. These are silly things, inconsequential by any standard.

Remembering is fun.

I recently made a presentation for a group in Savannah. I enjoyed walking the riverfront and seeing the shops and restaurants that occupy buildings that have been there for decades and decades. You look at the waters of the river that brought in cargo and took out cotton two centuries ago. And you think about the continuity of our story. One day in Georgia I admired the new library building that a school I was visiting had just completed. “It’s built where the old armory was,” the librarian told me. “So you tore that down to make the space,” I commented. “No,” she responded. “Sherman did.”

Everything seems like yesterday.

And this whole country is just a baby. Our family visited Ireland and England two summers ago. What stuck in my mind was how old – really old – everything is. There were castles that go back to the seventh century and beyond. Where we measure in decades and centuries, they measure in centuries and millennia. Astronauts comment on how orbiting the earth gives one a sense of condensed space – the world seems quite small. The experience of history gives one a sense of condensed time. Human history telescopes and our share of it becomes just a moment.

What holds us together from generation to generation is not mainly the buildings and their ruins. Mostly it is the stories. The story of the fallen art piece collapses the history of our business for the old-timers and, in its own little way, incorporates new people, new hearers, into the continuity of our history.

There is a book, Encouraging the Heart (Kouzes and Posner), that makes a big point of the importance of stories in an enterprise. You can tell people in mission statements and slogans what your office or your institution is all about. But those words have no soul and are quickly forgotten. The stories, however, have color and texture and personality that could never be captured in cold print. They help people to understand that they are a part of something – something bigger than a name on a door and a bit of space behind it.

So what? So this is a plea to you. Tell the stories of your place. If you are new, ask for the stories. Your college and your offices have histories that are fascinating. Who are the characters that started things and built them? What were the great events – triumphs and disasters – that shaped the present? What were the funny and tragic things that have happened to hone the mettle of the place? Those memories are enshrined in the stories.

But only if they are told!

Dan Brent is a Professional Development Officer with Citibank. He regularly presents seminars for financial aid office personnel.