Blog 15: Oral Interview

Well, I'm having technical difficulties with uploading my oral interview, so I'll just transcribe some of the dialogue.

Date: March 26, 2013
Time: 1157
*I started the recording late, since I thought that writing it would be easier.

A: Like, uhm, something that's going on, and then he freaked out because he lived, I lived, I used to live in Passaic and, uhm. we are about ten minutes from the city.
R: yeah
A: So, uhm, the first initial thing he thought of was my brother, who was in school and he didn't want because they were saying, you know, everything needs to shut down.  There's going to be an explosion and they are gonna take everything down, so my dad immediately ran out the house to pick up my little brother who at the time was 6 or 7.
R: sounds exciting [laughing]
A: It was crazy.  I remember I got so scared because I'm like 'Oh my God.' My dad left me alone.  My grandparents weren't home.  I believed that they had gone out to go grocery shopping and, uhm, he called my mom.  My mom said she would get home immediately.  And we were just trying to get in contact with relatives, you know, just making sure they were okay and everything.  My mom got home right away and she she just it was very terrifying. We went to roof, to rooftop, because it was building.  And we saw the smoke clearly like it was really close and big.  And, uhm, we saw an airplane fly real low
R: yeah
A: And then like two minutes later, we went back downstairs and realized that the same airplane that we saw flying real low was the second one that hit
R: Oh Man.
A: So that was really like
R: I was only ten.  It's not really what a ten year old wants to see
A: But what about you, what where, what's going on with you?
R: Ugh, I was uh, sitting in a room, filling out our forms for Navy Federal,
A: Uh huh
R: a little banking union and I remember my Chief leaving the room and then coming back and she was like everyone look up.  So we all looked up.  And then she was like, 'We are going to War'.  And everybody was like 'what the hell is going on.' I never saw any of the footage.  I never read any of the newspapers, but that's
A: Oh my god
R: But then she said ah anyone from New Jersey New York if you have relatives there you know go ahead we'll bring you down to the PX and you can make a phone call.  So
A: Wow.  That's terrifying

What I noticed from the interview:
-Don't interrupt the interviewee when they are speaking.  Let them speak.
-Have your questions readily available.  We didn't know where to start.
-Be flexible.  Prepare to ad-lib off the conversation.
-Don't try to write.  Invest in a recorder.  And then invest time on trying to link up your recording to this blog.
-Interview someone who has experience.  I wasn't in New Jersey when 9/11 occurred.