400 West Jones Ferry Rd.
Carrboro, NC
The Flip Side of Genealogy
Speaker: Dr. David Kendall
Presentation Description:
Following the publication of his book, When Descendants Become Ancestors: The Flip Side of Genealogy, Dr. David Kendall goes all over the country sharing the message of how important it is to write down the stories of our own selves and our own lives in addition to capturing those of our ancestors. He reminds us about how important this will be to ensure that future generations, aka our descendants, will have stories and information about US long after we have left this earthly world.
Raised in a small tourist village in northern New York State where he has returned in retirement, Dr. Kendall spent 30 years educating professional counselors. His life experiences amid studies in history, genealogy, and gerontology, coupled with his belief in the innate wisdom of every individual, have inspired this writing.
Especially significant was his maternal great-grandmother’s diary, written when she was a young mother in 1865, which stimulated his thinking about how little most of us know about our ancestors, aside from mundane vital statistics. The diary generated many unanswered questions, but also led to his interest in the flip side of genealogy—looking forward to what we can provide for our descendants, rather than backward to what we didn’t get from our ancestors.
Through the transmission of our stories, each of us has the opportunity to be teachers to future generations, including the yet-to-be-born. Autobiographies are unnecessary and burdensome to most, but short stories, anecdotes and vignettes are within everyone’s reach. Life stories, experiences and conclusions are unique to each individual and we cannot know which ones might be helpful to a given descendant. Our task is only to provide them.
For a map to the Community Center, visit the DOGS Event page.
Speaker Biography:
Dr. Kendall is a 1959 graduate of Cornell University with a major in government and a specialization in international relations. Following ten years as a high school teacher and school counselor, he obtained his doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh and spent the next thirty years as a professor in the graduate school Department of Counselor Education at the State University of New York at Brockport, complementing his teaching with a part-time private practice in personal and family counseling.
Cynthia, his wife of 52 years, is a retired vocal music teacher and together they raised two entrepreneurial daughters.