Writing Your Family History

April 1 is the sign-up deadline for the workshop “Writing Your Family History,” to be held Sat., April 15, from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at North Central Missouri College in Trenton. The event is one of the special activities NCMC has planned in celebration of National Community College Month.

Presenters Charley and June Kempthorne from LifeStory Magazine, will show participants how to produce a family history and give personal help during the hands-on workshop. Cost is $55, which includes lunch; however, those that sign up with a friend will save $10 each. To register, contact NCMC Continuing Education at 660-359-3948, ext. 278 or 280.

Charley Kempthorne has conducted family history writing workshops in 16 states, from California to Florida. He is a former college professor, farmer, adult educator, and contractor.

Since 1991 he has edited and/or published LifeStory Magazine (“The Family History Writer’s Workshop”). He holds an MFA in narrative (fiction) writing from the famed Writer’s Workshop of the University of Iowa. In 1977 he founded the first reminiscence workshop in the nation in Manhattan, Kansas.

One of his first students was Jessie Foveaux, who wrote (in Charley’s class) her memoirs and sold them for more than a million dollars!

Charley says,”I see my job primarily as showing people how much they already know about the kind of writing they are asked to do by their children and grandchildren to produce family history.”

Charley has been a writer ever since he can remember. As a boy of 13 he bought a typewriter with earnings from a wheat crop and painted the keys with phosphorescent paint “so I could see the keys in the dark and write after my parents told me lights out” (but it didn’t work). Charley is a Kansas native, and still lives in an old farmhouse in Kansas near Manhattan with his wife, June Fritz Kempthorne.

June and husband, Charley, started LifeStory Magazine in 1991. June has been the magazine’s Art Director since that time and is now the publisher. They produce each monthly issue using Pagemaker software.

June has been an artist all of her life. She studied art at Kansas State University (where she took a BFA in 1971), and several of her works produced there, including a panel of silkscreens called Pansies, became part of the University’s permanent collection. While still a student, one of her works received the Governor’s Prize. In 1966 she worked as a litho artist for Hallmark Cards in Kansas City. She has always been especially interested in fabric art and in sewing as an art form. For a time she operated a fabric and clothing store at a shopping center near the university. In 1990 she received an AAUW art award for a batik, Lizards.

Charley and June Kempthorne, 1-800-685-7330, www.kansas.net/~lifestor/

Diane Davis, ext. 222 (ddavis @mail.ncmc.cc.mo.us

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Joanna Anderson, ext. 202 ([email protected])

North Central Missouri College, 660-359-3948, www.ncmc.cc.mo.us