About
Alan Bergman
My Passion
Will Rogers (1879-1935), the American stage and film actor, once commented that, “I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn’t like.”
I resonate with Rogers’ message in that I’ve never met anyone without an engaging, personal tale to share. Throughout my career, I have discovered that some prodding can reveal fascinating personal histories and journeys. Our own biographies, which we may view with a jaundiced eye as hum-drum and ordinary, may be fascinating to those allowed to learn them. The common man and woman, in this biographer’s view, has yet to exist.
There are so many fantastic stories out there. My cup runneth over from the ones that I’ve learned and have been privileged to capture, preserve, and share. This has become my passion.
I am pleased to serve as a director of the Personal Historians Northeast Network, a professional community comprised of my fellow biographers. I speak at public libraries on memoir compilation and writing and on ethical wills. Prior to launching my career as a biographer-personal historian, I spent four decades in the graphic arts industry, authoring articles and blogs as a steady side gig.
My fascination with biographies, coupled with a deep frustration of letting so many of my family members pass into eternity without learning their stories, has ignited my passion behind Life Stories Preserved LLC.
I would love to know what drove my Great-Grandmother, Fanny, to seek a divorce from Harry in 1905, almost unheard of and absolutely scandalous in that era. It would have been fascinating to learn about life in Grandma Pauline’s and Grandpa Max’s shtetls (villages) in the Galicia region of Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century. How I long to ask my father to describe being under attack during the Battle of the Philippine Sea in World War II. But, as the cliche aptly goes, “that ship has long sailed.”
Max Bergman
1896-1963
My passion is also fueled by the fact that I want future generations of my family to learn our stories; for example, the story of my Grandfather, Max. Within a few years of arriving in America penniless and not speaking any English, he had the moxie and determination to start a manufacturing company in New York City in 1922. The firm existed for nearly a century, and put food on the tables and roofs over the heads of hundreds of families during that period.
It is too late for me to capture many of my family members’ stories, but I have been successfully capturing others, creating their biographies and memoirs. My profound respect for the human experience, coupled with my desire to perpetuate this information and history, has manifested itself in Life Stories Preserved LLC. I hope that we can together take this important, rewarding journey.