Only in fairytales can life be everlasting. So what we celebrate are the fractions of time that make our finite years more magnificent than even a fairytale. Giving time to help others, being promoted to a dream job, hearing “I love you,” saying it back. It is a string of these types of moments that builds a legacy. And it is the mission of two local businesses to archive those moments—creating documentaries of legacies for people who did not even know they had a story to tell.
The Legacy Project
ALS is a neurodegenerative disease. It is progressive, known for stealing away life much too quickly and much too early. More than three years ago, Seth Nenstiel’s father was diagnosed with ALS. Seth was suddenly struck by the gruesome meaning of “terminal” and the awareness that someday, when his father’s story ended, he would no longer be able to hear it. That sorrow inspired Seth to provide a way for not just his family, but for all local families, to capture their loved one’s wisdom, insight and history in a form that exceeds beyond their years.
Nearly two years ago, Seth created The Legacy Project, building from his well-established business Seth Nenstiel Photography. As a photographer, Nenstiel is also an artist and storyteller. He appreciates photography for its ability to portray “a static point on someone’s timeline,” calling the practice “very transient.” Nenstiel explains that he considers video to be an “extension of photography,” but it is something much “deeper and richer.” By capturing voice, expression and inflection, video transcends photography to reach the most visceral places. He calls this transcendence “magical.”
Nenstiel’s goal when creating a video for The Legacy Project is to “document the hard stuff.” This includes seniors reflecting on their past, organizations establishing their values and businesses extending their community presence. For example, one of his initial projects came from a church requesting a documentary of its retiring pastor. The church hoped to capture the significance of his 35 years of service, the direction of his life and the breadth of his influence. For all his Legacy Project videos, Nenstiel begins the process by sending a questionnaire to the family and the individual. He uses the answers to understand the individual’s journey thus far—his or her family, relationships and adventures—and uses that understanding to build the core of his interview. During Nenstiel’s recorded conversation with the individual, he focuses on the wisdom that person carries, where it was harvested, and how it spills into others. At the end, he polishes the video and digitally sends the documentary to the individual, also creating a custom YouTube page for him or her.
Nenstiel says the process requires a logistical and emotional investment from both the individual and himself, but he also experiences “an immediate gratification” at watching the clients’ eyes as they recall a lifetime. Due to a wrist injury, he has transitioned his career from photography to digital marketing, but he continues The Legacy Project. He is no longer taking wedding shots; he is uprooting the stories that live in all of us and proving that, just like his father, we all have a legacy to outlast our timeline.
Inspired by sorrow, Seth Nenstiel created a way to capture loved ones beyond their years.
Life & Legacies
Within one month, both of Meredith Jorgensen Cooke’s grandparents were diagnosed with lung cancer. Over 160 years of life between the two placed on the transplant waiting list in one month. Meredith recalls her panic at the idea that she might never again hear their stories—especially in her grandfather’s thick Danish accent—of their families, his immigration, their falling in love, the struggles and the bliss. So she and her father flew to her grandparents’ home in Florida with an old video camera and asked every question they might ever wonder the answer to. Four months later, Jorgensen Cooke’s grandmother passed away. But those 160 years, her grandfather’s voice and her grandmother’s smile were permanently stored. An everlasting legacy.
This is what inspired Jorgensen Cooke and Joe Mitton, who worked together at WGAL as a reporter and photographer, respectively, to say, “we can do this for other families.” They opened Life & Legacies in November 2015 in downtown Lancaster to document the stories of their community. Although Life & Legacies was fueled by capturing well-worn years, it also serves to capture the many celebrations of life, such as anniversaries, retirements and growing up. “We’ve been doing this as humans for millennia,” Jorgensen Cooke says of storytelling. Though she said that most people feel they do not have a story worth sharing. After years of hearing and telling stories as a journalist, Jorgensen Cooke knows that is untrue. She says, “we’re all more alike than we think,” seeking common threads of happiness and success. But it is exactly how, why, and what we are seeking that makes us and our own stories unique.
For a Life & Legacies video, clients first contact Jorgensen Cooke and Mitton about the intended subject and purpose. Many clients, Jorgensen Cooke says, ask for interview documentaries of their relatives as a keepsake or gift. Her first step is to collect a “Story Inventory,” she explains, during which she asks the person “story-prompting” questions about experiences, family and more. Those answers will later help her to guide the conversation. After helping the interviewee prepare, Jorgensen Cooke leads a 60-minute conversation at the individual’s home or at the Life & Legacies studio. Then, the team lightly edits the video before sending the polished product to their client, along with a two-minute clip compilation—“the movie trailer of their life,” according to Jorgensen Cooke.
The process is never easy. As a two-time cancer survivor herself, Jorgensen Cooke is empathetic to tragedy. She is not simply listening to the individual’s story; she is plunging into the most magnificent and most horrendous moments of their lives. “I’m on that journey with them,” she says, calling the process beautiful and cathartic. Jorgensen Cooke explains that every conversation both brings her back to her own story and proves that “all of us are survivors.” Tragedy leaves out no one, but neither do desire, perseverance or joy.
For a journalist used to covering only news in one-minute fragments, Jorgensen Cooke cherishes the opportunity to be immersed in the most personal details of others’ stories. She is not reporting facts on school board decisions or car accidents–she is travelling along on pregnancy journeys, giving space to World War II and Vietnam veterans to open up, helping lifelong couples to remember why they fell in love. Because Life & Legacies utilizes video, these stories are captured in the person’s own voice and tone, with his or her own unfiltered emotion. “Video is so important,” she says, because “it is a medium people are responding to more and more.” As stories and data pass rapidly through the technological age, these documentaries serve as permanent records of the beauty and brutality in a human life. Currently, Life & Legacies serves to expose that in the Lancaster community. Eventually, Meredith and Joe hope to expand Life & Legacies to all counties in the Susquehanna Valley.
Meredith Jorgensen Cooke started this journey by flying to her grandparents' home and asking them every question she would ever want to know the answer to.
