Listening to Pandemic Narratives

At two public events in October 2022, doctors Jamie Wagman and Julia Dauer from Saint Mary’s College presented the results of an oral history collection project they’d been working on. The idea was to collect stories of real people in our community deeply impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The full versions of these oral histories are preserved in the Civil Rights Heritage Center’s archives, but today we share audio from Drs. Wagman and Dauer’s public presentations. Narrators include Mark Albion, Dea Andrews, Fr. Brian Ching, Stacy Davis, Nikki Hammond, Skyler H., Jennet Ingle, HR Jung, Andre Northern, Lauren S., Ramal Taylor, and Asa Wood. This episode was produced by Jamie Wagman and Julia Dauer from Saint Mary’s College, Donald Brittain from the Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts at Indiana University South Bend, and George Garner from the IU South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center. Full transcript of this episode available here. Want to learn more about South Bend’s history? View the photographs and documents that helped create it. Visit Michiana Memory at http://michianamemory.sjcpl.org/. Title music, “History Explains Itself,” from Josh Spacek. Visit his page on the Free Music Archive, http://www.freemusicarchive.org/.