Crystal's Hymn

09/08/21 • 18 min

1 Listener

Crystal Chandler finds the perfect memento of her grandfather, a former Seventh Day Adventist preacher, to bring with her when she moves to New York.

Season 1, Episode 3: Crystal's Hymn
Guest: Crystal Chandler

Crystal Chandler runs a media production company that highlights the underrepresented voices in society while providing production opportunities for young people of color to gain hands-on media experience.

You can follow Crystal on social media @TheCrystalLens. You can can learn more about her work and production company at www.TheCrystalLens.com.

Original music composed by Nate Sharples.

Sound FX, Foley, and mixing by Kenneth Donahue.

Story editing by Galen Beebe.

Produced and hosted by Lori Mortimer.

"Victory in Praise" by Cast of Characters; licensed from Soundstripe.

Visit www.MementosPodcast.com to see some photos of the memento in this episode.
Follow the show @MementosPodcast on Twitter and Instagram.
Follow the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/mementospodcast
Follow Lori at @mortaymortay on Twitter and Instagram.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Mementos ... sometimes what you really keep is on the inside.

CRYSTAL: About a year ago, I'm moving to New York, and I want something of my grandfather’s. Like, I need to have something other than just a picture to remember him by. And I go back to my childhood home. My mom and my grandmother still lived there, and they had really cleaned out a good portion of his stuff at that point.

[00:00:31] And mind you, he's passed for about seven, eight years at this point. And so I'm looking in the closets, and I'm looking past this plastic bag with like this gray thing in it. And I'm thinking, oh, it's just some, like, I don't know, like rain jacket, like, like, let me find something, you know, more of substance. And I keep passing it.

[00:00:47] I'm pushing the bag to the left. And to the right. And just looking around it. As soon as I'm about to leave, I think, okay, let me go look one more time. And for whatever reason, I don't know if it was God or the universe or what, but something told me to open up that plastic bag.

And I just thought, like, this is worth a million dollars.

[00:01:14] I couldn't have found anything better than this.

[00:01:25] LORI: Welcome back to Mementos. I'm Lori Mortimer, and I am so happy to return, finally, with some new episodes after an almost two-year hiatus.

That's one reason this is a happy tune.

[00:01:44] But the real reason is because of the story my guest Crystal has to tell us today. It has moments of sadness. But ultimately it's about deep love and bonds between a grandfather and his granddaughter.

[00:02:00] What's more joyful than that?

[00:02:05] I'll step out of the way now and let Crystal get back to telling us what she found in that plastic bag.

[00:02:19] My name is Crystal Chandler. I currently live in New York City, and I'm originally from Boston. My grandfather's name was Aubrey Prescott Williams, and he was born in Barbados in the 1920s, I want to say. And he went to England and then eventually came to the United States and settled in Cambridge, where his mother was living.

[00:02:43] He was a pastor in Barbados, and then I'm not sure if he preached when he was in England, but he definitely preached when he got to United States. And he was a pastor at Cambridge Seventh Day Adventist Church.

[00:02:59] Growing up, I didn't get to enjoy him as a pastor, but I got to enjoy, you know, all of the years of his, his pastoring through his sleep.

So my grandfather used to sing in his sleep and sing full choruses, full hymns. He would sing soprano. He would sing the tenor. He would sing the bass and he would sing the piano part and the violin and the trumpet part.

[00:03:24] I mean, he was just a one-man band in his sleep. I mean, fully dead asleep, but he was singing his heart away.

[00:03:35] I remember my cousin and I, sometimes we would laugh or peek and see what was going on, but it was just grandpa singing in his sleep.

[00:04:01] When he passed, I actually had his blanket. And I kept it with me, and I just never wanted to let it go. Until my apartment caught on fire. We didn't actually lose anything. Like, the fire didn't catch my things on fire. It's just that the entire apartment smelled like smoke, and it's really hard to get smoke out of any type of fabric.

[00:04:24] And so I think in the process of getting rid of things, you know, maybe a roommate of mine tossed it out by accident.

And so now I go back to, again, to my childhood home. And so I'm looking in the closets, a...

Crystal Chandler finds the perfect memento of her grandfather, a former Seventh Day Adventist preacher, to bring with her when she moves to New York.

Season 1, Episode 3: Crystal's Hymn
Guest: Crystal Chandler

You can follow Crystal on social media @TheCrystalLens. You can can learn more about her work and production company at www.TheCrystalLens.com.

Original music composed by Nate Sharples.

Sound FX, Foley, and mixing by Kenneth Donahue.

Story editing by Galen Beebe.

Produced and hosted by Lori Mortimer.

"Victory in Praise" by Cast of Characters; licensed from Soundstripe.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Mementos ... sometimes what you really keep is on the inside.

And I just thought, like, this is worth a million dollars.

[00:01:14] I couldn't have found anything better than this.

[00:01:25] LORI: Welcome back to Mementos. I'm Lori Mortimer, and I am so happy to return, finally, with some new episodes after an almost two-year hiatus.

That's one reason this is a happy tune.

[00:02:00] What's more joyful than that?

[00:02:05] I'll step out of the way now and let Crystal get back to telling us what she found in that plastic bag.

[00:02:59] Growing up, I didn't get to enjoy him as a pastor, but I got to enjoy, you know, all of the years of his, his pastoring through his sleep.

[00:03:24] I mean, he was just a one-man band in his sleep. I mean, fully dead asleep, but he was singing his heart away.

[00:03:35] I remember my cousin and I, sometimes we would laugh or peek and see what was going on, but it was just grandpa singing in his sleep.

[00:04:24] And so I think in the process of getting rid of things, you know, maybe a roommate of mine tossed it out by accident.

And so now I go back to, again, to my childhood home. And so I'm looking in the closets, a...

Previous Episode

Coming back in September!

Mementos is returning in September 2021 with new episodes. In this update, you'll hear a clip of the first episode that will drop just after Labor Day. Subscribe now or set a reminder to check MementosPodcast.com the week of Labor Day.
TRANSCRIPT
Episode Title: Coming Back in September!

Date published: 7/25/21

LORI:

Hey there, I’m Lori Mortimer, the host and producer of Mementos. After a brief hiatus – brief being defined as, say, 23 months (it sounds shorter if you say it in months) – Mementos is coming back this September with brand new episodes.

Here’s the opening to the first episode you’ll hear this fall. It drops in September, just after Labor Day.

CRYSTAL:

About a year ago, I'm moving to New York, and I want something of my grandfather's. Like, I need to have something other than just a picture to remember him by.

And I go back to my childhood home. My mom and my grandmother still lived there, and they had really cleaned out a good portion of his stuff at that point. And mind you, he's passed for about seven, eight years at this point.

And so I'm looking in the closets, and I'm looking past this plastic bag with like this gray thing in it. And I'm thinking, Oh, it's just some like, I don't know, like rain jacket. Like, like, let me find something, you know, more of substance.

And I keep passing it. I'm pushing the bag to the left and to the right and just looking around it. As soon as I'm about to leave, I think, Okay, let me go look one more time. And for whatever reason, I don't know if it was God or the universe or what, but something told me to open up that plastic bag.

And I just thought, like, this is worth a million dollars. I couldn't have found anything better than this.

LORI:

What did Crystal find in the closet? I dunno. You’ll just have wait until September to find out.

Hit Subscribe in your favorite podcast app, or set a reminder to check MementosPodcast.com just after Labor Day. See you in September.

Mementos audio logo is by Martin Austwick. And the song today was by Blue Dot Sessions. Thank you both.

Next Episode

Cherie's Letters

Cherie inherits a stack of 33 letters, written by her grandfather, who died during the Korean War, and who Cherie's family never talked about. Before receiving the letters, she knew almost nothing about him. She hadn't even seen a picture of him. But the letters unveil who he was and the fateful decisions he made that affected not only his life but still affect her life today.

Larry Hood’s page on the Korean War Project website. (While talking with Cherie, I misspoke and called it the Korean War Memorial website. It's the Korean War Project. My apologies to the folks there!)
Season 1, Episode 4: Crystal's Letters
Guest: Cherie Louise Turner

CREDITS:
Lori Mortimer – Host, Sound Designer, Producer

Cherie Turner – Guest

Charles Gustine – Voice Actor

Galen Beebe – Story Editor

Alyssa Duvak – Social Media

Music:

Micolai by Blue Dot Sessions

Looperman:

looperman-l-1186967-0179585-piano-melody-654-abelouis

looperman-l-2431466-0230476-sunset-piano-melody

looperman-l-4487063-0257366-lofi-piano-really-chill

looperman-l-2392682-0213471-classic-mellow-piano
--------------------

TRANSCRIPT

Mementos Episode S1:E4

Cherie’s Letters

[00:00:00]

CHERIE: One of the reasons that he was so aggressive about putting himself in danger is because he just wanted to get back home. And that was his fastest way to get back home. And it ended up doing the very thing that made it, this short track, which is that it was super, super dangerous and you're at risk of dying.

And that's what happened.

LORI: Welcome to Mementos. I’m Lori Mortimer. If you listened to the last episode, Crystal’s Hymn, you’ll know that it was a story about a grandfather. Today’s episode is also about a grandfather, but the two episodes could not be more different.

In this episode, my guest is going to tell us about a grandfather who she knew nothing about until just a few years ago.

Cherie has been able to bring back to life, in a sense, her grandfather, who died many years ago and who had been lost to the sands of time.

And she learned that he made some fateful decisions a long time ago that not only affected him but also still affect her life today.

[00:01:30]

CHERIE: My name is Cherie Louise Turner. And I’m originally from Goleta, California, which is near Santa Barbara.

LORI: Cherie’s story starts in 2010, when she got a phone call from her aunt.

CHERIE: She informed me that my grandmother had passed, after several bouts of cancer. And she had left me some things in her will. Which I was very surprised about because I really hadn’t spoken much to her um, in probably over 20 years.

[00:02:00]

So I received this stack of 33 letters that my grandfather, Larry Hood, had written to my grandmother while he was in the Army and then when he went off to the Korean War.

Before I got these letters -- I got them when I was 40 years old -- I really didn’t think much of my grandfather. Or I didn’t give him much thought. I had maybe known that he died in a war. I wasn't even ever clear on which war it was.

He went into the Army on the 4th of April, 1951, and he died on June 29th, 1952. He wasn't even overseas for but a few months. So by the time I was cognizant of this missing person, he'd been gone for such a long time, and nobody really talked about him because my grandmother had already been married -- remarried -- twice.

And so this was my first opportunity to learn anything about him.

[00:03:03]

LORI: One by one, these letters unveil the pieces of Larry’s life story.

Most of them are written to Cherie’s grandmother Mary and to Cherie’s father Gary, who was just little at the time. He was between 4 and 5 years of age. And yes, this family has rhyming names: Larry and Mary, and their son Gary.

In the letters, Larry talks about his everyday life in the Army. They start when he was in training camp in California, and then take him to a stop to Japan and then on to the front lines in North Korea.

[00:03:30]

CHERIE: I don't know how he ended up in the Army. I don't get the sense that he was real gung-ho about it. I think he probably got enlisted.

And from all of the letters, all he wanted to do was come back home.

LORI: You can tell that Larry was especially focused on getting home sooner rather th...