Panchita Espitia was a formidable woman, not afraid of rattlesnakes underfoot on the Texas ranches of her youth, or of death itself. Her grandson, Bishop Ricardo Ramirez, learned this near the end of…

From the first roll call of the 1964 school year, William Lynn Weaver was targeted by white teachers at the Tennessee high school he and 13 other black students integrated. A few weeks later, Weaver,…

Beatrice Vio has cultivated a passion for fencing since she was five years old. At eleven, she contracted severe meningitis which took her to the brink of death. The doctors gave her an unimaginable…

Ellaraino experienced a common teenage reaction when she learned she’d have to leave Los Angeles to spend the summer in Louisiana with her great-grandmother, Silvia. Less common was…

After being drafted in 1969, Tom Geerdes served as an Army medic in the 11th Armored Calvary in Vietnam and Cambodia.  Like many veterans, he returned home a changed man.  At…

Since 2005, StoryCorps and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum have worked to record at least one story to honor each life lost in the attacks on September 11, 2001 and February 26, 1993.…

From the moment Richard Pecorella met Karen Juday, he knew she was the one. They were inseparable until Sept. 11, 2001, the day that two planes attacked the World Trade Center towers. Richard…