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Legacy Documents


Wordsmith Associates is a full-service communication consulting firm. Within that broad spectrum of activity, our specialty is in helping clients create a variety of legacy documents – written works that allow an individual’s thoughts, actions, feelings, and values to survive generations into the future.

We think of legacy documents broadly to include Legacy Letters (and ethical wills), memoirs, autobiographies, family histories, personal tributes, poem collections, photo compilations, posthumous writings, ethical wills, eulogies, and any other reflective, later-in-life document written to memorialize aspects of the author’s accumulated wisdom, experience, and perspective for the benefit of others.

The following client stories reveal an interesting variety of life contexts that people have chosen to feature in their legacy documents They also show the range of talent sets that Wordsmith Associates has brought to bear in producing final deliverables. Reviewing these client stories should also stimulate your creative thinking on ways to craft and position the story that you have to tell.

Click through the client stories below to read about specific legacy documents. (Note: You also have the option in each of these cases to see the finished publication, or portions thereof, directly on your screen in “netbook” format.)

Eulogies

A Tribute to Bobbie – Family of Roberta Davis

When Bobbie Davis died from complications of diabetes, Bobbie’s family gathered at her funeral service to pay their last respects, and numerous family members had important things to say in eulogies they prepared. Together, the vignettes they shared created a beautiful mosaic profiling a woman of compassion and good humor who loved life gratefully, lived life honestly, and created a warm home environment that fostered a strong, closely knit family.

Memoirs

On the Earthly Way – Joseph Morris

Joseph Morris, a master carpenter and overseer in North Wales who also served as an ordained Independent minister, sat down on his 70th birthday in May 1876 to recount his life. He felt that “it would be beneficial for me to record my life on earth, before I leave. Maybe it would please my relatives, especially my dear children, to have something to remember about me, after I have traveled this earthly world.”

Autobiographies

My Life: An American’s Journey – Margaret Jeanine Condit Hastings

When she was in her mid-70s, Margaret Jeanine Condit Hastings did an amazing job of writing the story of her life and, when she presented “My Life” to her children in thick 3-ring binders, she thought the work was done. Her son Steve, however, had other ideas. Steve envisioned the notebook as more like a bound book that would be easy to read and that would be sturdy enough to last well into the future.

Tributes

There Are No Alligators in Heaven! – Jennifer Hale with her parents Donna and Evan Michael Codell

Jennifer Hale defied the odds. When she was born with cystic fibrosis (CF) in 1972, the average life expectancy of individuals with CF was 15 years. But Jennifer lived to see her 43rd birthday before she passed away in December 2015 (while waiting for a lung transplant). After she died, Jennifer’s parents – Donna and Evan Michael Codell – decided to tell the story of Jennifer’s life so that people could meet Jennifer and come to appreciate the very special qualities she embodied.

Tomorrow Comes – Donna Mebane

In July 2011, Emma Mebane, age 19, died in her sleep from no known cause. She was home on summer break after her freshman year in college and spent the evening having pizza with her brother and dad and facetiming with her sister and mom in England. In the morning, Emma’s living spark had vanished. But Emma’s mother, Donna, could not accept that she was gone, and she began to imagine a world in which Emma could continue “to laugh, love and, yes, live, in a place that wouldn’t scare her, change her, or overwhelm her.” Over the next months, Donna created this world, that Emma came to call AFTER, in an award-winning book called Tomorrow Comes.

Posthumous Publications

Update 21 – Beth Bello

In July 2007, after Beth Bello discovered that she had Stage 4 breast cancer, she kept her circle of family & friends (her “Prayer Warriors”) informed with periodic updates. The updates were sequentially numbered and spanned almost two years. By the time it came for Beth to send “Update 21,” her decline had been precipitous, and her sad earthly conclusion was foreshadowed in the symptoms that Beth presented at that time. On April 22, 2009, Beth slipped into a deep sleep and passed away the next day, quietly and at peace.

A Book Abot Chaps – Emma Mebane

At the viewing in the funeral home for Emma, a radiant young woman who died in her sleep at the age of 19 in July 2011, her family put out a number of things that visitors could look at while they waited in line to pay their respects. One of those items was a “book” that Emma wrote in first grade. It was called A Book Abot Chaps (phonetic for “A Book About Shapes”). It looked every bit the product of a first grader, with many endearing, age-related mistakes and, when people picked it up, they loved it. Based on this reaction, the family decided to publish Emma’s A Book Abot Chaps as a tribute to her life. They felt that Emma becoming a published Amazon author would be an honor to her.

SEEK TO FIND

WRITINGS ON THE WALL

  • In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. –The Common Gospel, “Eternal Word”
  • All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind. –Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam
  • Man’s word is God in man. –Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Idylls of the King,” The Coming of Arthur
  • Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it. –Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
  • How long a time lies in one little word! Such is the breath of kings. –Shakespeare, King Richard II
  • It is not of so much consequence what you say, as how you say it. Memorable sentences are memorable on account of some irradiating word. –Alexander Smith, “Dreamthorp,” On the Writing of Essays
  • The writer doesn’t want success ... The writer wants to leave a scratch on the wall of oblivion that someone a hundred or a thousand years later will see. Kilroy was here. –William Faulkner, Faulkner in the University
  • Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled. –Horace, Epistles
  • I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long Words Bother me. –Alan Alexander Milne, Willie-the-Pooh
  • Life's like a movie. Write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending. –Jim Henson, The Muppet Movie
  • So is a word better than a gift. –Apocrypha
  • Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact. It is silence which isolates. –Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
  • Honeyed words like bees, gilded and sticky, with a little sting. –Elinor Hoyt Wylie, Pretty Words
  • Watch your thoughts, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your action. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny. –Anonymous
  • Nature fits all her children with something to do, He who would write and can’t write, can surely review. –James Russell Lowell, A Fable for Critics
  • The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence. –Paul Simon, The Sound of Silence
  • The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it. –Ernest Hemingway, Paris Review
  • Prête-moi ta plume pour écrire un mot. Lend me your pen to write a word. –Au Clair de la Lune
  • How many verses have I thrown into the fire because the one peculiar word, the wanted most, was irrecoverably lost. –Walter Savage Landor, Verses Why Burnt
  • Sweet religion makes a rhapsody of words. –Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • And many a word, at random spoken, may soothe a wound or heart that’s broken. –Sir Walter Scott, Lord of the Isles
  • Light dies before thy uncreating word; Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall, and universal darkness buries all. –Alexander Pope, The Dunciad
  • The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work and that writing didn’t require any. –Russell Baker, Growing Up
  • Choice word and measured phrase… above the reach of ordinary men. –William Wordsworth, Resolution and Independence
  • “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.” –Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
  • Omit needless words. –William Strunk, Jr, The Elements of Style
  • Good words are worth much … and cost little. –George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum
  • A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator. –John Steinbeck, “In Awe of Words”
  • In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature. –Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous
  • To call forth a concept, a word is needed; to portray a phenomenon, a concept is needed. All three mirror one and the same reality. –Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Traité Elémentaire de Chimie
  • Word is a shadow of deed. –Democritus
  • Words are like leaves and, where they most abound, much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. –Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
  • My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts –never to heaven go. –Shakespeare, Hamlet

CLICK HERE to see these writings on the wall in a larger size.

Printing in Perspective

Printing in Perspective
Your life is made up of two dates and a dash. Make the most of the dash.

Make the most of your life - your dash! - and share what you learn with others.

The kingdom of God does not come with observation ... for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. -Jesus the Messiah. The Common Gospel ("Final Journey)

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