Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
[Music] foreign [Music] good morning good afternoon good evening wherever you are in the world it’s Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman with Relationship Matters TV. I hope everyone out there is doing great. It’s a beautiful day here in Chicago, I should say it’s a beautiful evening. I want to start off with just making everyone aware, even though I’m sure most of you are aware, that it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which is why I have on my breast cancer awareness jewelry. But ladies, I want to emphasize to you to get your mammograms. It’s so very important because, number one, you want to know if there’s even an inkling of something because early prevention is the best prevention. I have friends who have had breast cancer and who are survivors, but then I also have had a couple of friends who passed from breast cancer. So I want to urge you, make sure you get your mammograms and donate. Donate to any breast cancer awareness non-profit. I prefer Susan G. Komen. So just remember, this is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Now, you know I always get on my soapbox regarding the vaccine. I am waiting for my booster. I think I’m going to because I got Pfizer, and I have my two shots, and I think Monday I’m going to go and get my booster. I know a lot of you feel that, I know a lot of you in my audience feel that you really don’t want to be vaccinated. It is your freedom and it is your choice, but again, I want you to think about this: you don’t want to give it to any of your family members. You don’t want to see your child ill, your mom, your dad, even your friends or your co-workers. If you don’t want to get it for yourself, get it for the people who you know and love. I understand about personal freedoms, I understand that, but I wanted to say something I hadn’t said before. When I was going to school, we had to be vaccinated. You didn’t have a choice because if you didn’t get vaccinated, you couldn’t attend school, and I still have the marks on my arm, but it kept us from having a pandemic of measles and mumps and chickenpox and all of that. We didn’t know what was in it, but we got it. So I’m just imploring, I’m just, you know, I keep saying this to you: get your vaccine, rely on the science. So now that I’m off of my soapbox, I want to talk about my special guest. Her name is Deborah Strahorn. Well, I have to ask her if she is related to Michael, but anyway [Music] Deborah is a master storyteller. She believes that storytelling is the voice of literacy. She is a professional storyteller with Kumba Storytellers of Georgia and has been for over 20 years. She teaches storytelling in the after-school program in Atlanta, and she was the featured teller at over 33 libraries for the Atlanta Public Library Summer Reading Program. She is also the founder and director for Word of Mouth Stories Incorporated, and that’s where she provides storytelling and literacy workshops and performances to adults and to children. She also has a book that we’re going to talk about, and it’s a children’s book, so we’re going to talk about that book a little later. So currently, she serves as the special projects coordinator and storyteller in residence at the Apex Museum, and she is a member of the National Association of Black Storytellers and the National Storytelling Network. She also performs, and this is really interesting to me, with the Oakland Cemetery capturing the spirit of Oakland. We’re going to talk about that a little later, but I want to bring you right now to Deborah Strahorn. Hi Deborah.

Deborah Strahorn
I cannot hear you. Hello, can you hear me now?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
I can hear you now.

Deborah Strahorn
Okay, okay. Hello Janice, thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here today. Wow, that was a mouthful, that was some introduction.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Well, that’s you.

Deborah Strahorn
Well, that’s me, that’s me. It sounds like a lot, but I guess that’s what I’ve been doing over the years. I have been telling stories and doing literacy activities for over 30 years. So you said it, you said it. It’s just something when you hear your life, you know, when it rolls back to you, it’s like wow, I did all that.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So tell me, Deborah, well first of all, before we even get into your storytelling, where are you right now?

Deborah Strahorn
Well, I’m in Vegas right now.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Deborah Strahorn
My sister is celebrating her birthday, so it’s a real exciting time, and it’s a good time to be with family. And yes, I’m vaccinated. I flew out here, so I’m vaccinated, and that’s really important. But there’s a story to go with everything. I have some vaccine stories, some sister stories, some stories about cancer awareness and the Susan G. Komen. So storytelling is my life, it’s what I do. But the funny thing is, everybody has a story to tell. We’re all storytellers.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh wow. Well, I’m not gonna ask you what you all are doing in Vegas because they say whatever happens in Vegas…

Deborah Strahorn
…stays in Vegas, that’s right, that’s right.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So Deborah, how did you get into storytelling?

Deborah Strahorn
Well, that’s really funny you ask because growing up, I was quiet. I was a wallflower, I was a little mouse. But the thing about it was that everybody in our household was always reading something. My father was really big on books and literacy, and I found out recently that when he was a little boy, he learned to read at the age of three. His sister told me that he learned to read at the age of three. So when we were growing up, my father would always make us look up a word in the dictionary every day. We had to find out the definition of the word, write it down, be able to tell him the definition of a word, and to be able to use it in a sentence. And so that was so annoying, but as I grew older, I began to appreciate it because it helped me in school, and I got a real appreciation for his love of words. And I call him a wordsmith because he always kept a pad, a yellow pad, and when he heard a new word, he would write that word down. If we were watching TV or just sitting around having a conversation with friends, he would write the word down and then look it up in the dictionary later. When he passed away, it was amazing when I went through his things, I saw all of these yellow pads with words on the pads. So I can say that that’s where I first got my love of words was from my father. So when I was in high school, I got on the forensics team, and we would go to other schools and we would compete, and my area of expertise was prose. It was telling short stories, so we would have to memorize a short story and then tell it with emotion and feeling and, you know, compete against other students. And so that’s where it all started, that’s where it all started, and I started to come out of my shell at that point.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh my goodness, oh my goodness. So now you are a storyteller, but do you also write stories?

Deborah Strahorn
Well, I have written one story that’s been published in a book, and this—I didn’t bring the book with me—but the story is called “Jabari and the Always Busy, Sometimes Quiet, Often Noisy Room,” and it’s just about a little boy who has all of these imaginary adventures with his stuffed animal friends. He doesn’t have any sisters or brothers to talk to, but he creates all of these imaginary adventures. And the story was inspired by some stick puppets that I received as a gift from a person who didn’t even know me that was traveling, I think it was in Ghana, and their child care provider knew that I was a storyteller. And when she told them that I was a storyteller while they were traveling and they saw these stick puppets, they purchased the stick puppets for me as a gift. And when I saw the stick puppets, I was inspired to write the story.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh my goodness, you never know where you’re going to get your inspiration from.

Deborah Strahorn
You don’t, you never know where you’re going to get your inspiration. And I want to share something else, and I’m going to tie these two things together. But storytelling is something that you can—you can tell other people’s stories or you can write your own stories. Now, I wrote the children’s story, and I do perform it in public using the stick puppets. And it’s amazing that when I wrote the story and when I tell the story, it’s two totally different—not completely different stories, but I’ve added things to the live performance that I didn’t do for the written performance. So the other thing that I wanted to share is we all—I said earlier that we’re all storytellers because we all have things that happen to us every day, you know, happy memories, sad memories, and we can turn them into stories. And so as part of Kumba Storytellers of Georgia, each year we started doing this event called Mama Tales. Well, I could never do a Mama Tale because I lost my mother when I was 14 to breast cancer, which you talked about at the beginning of the show. So five years into the program, I finally came up with a personal story that I could share about my mother and breast cancer, and it was about the birthday party that she gave me, the surprise party for my 14th birthday, two weeks before she died. And I turned that into a personal story that I have written, and I have shared it in public, but I haven’t put it in a book. But it was a really happy story because that memory let me realize that my mother is still with me. So all of us have stories to tell, we just have to kind of dig down and find them, but they’re there, they’re there every day.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Wow, wow. Now, I’ve often heard that, of course, if you live in your life, your life is a story, actually.

Deborah Strahorn
Absolutely.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And, you know, but a lot of us don’t write them down or don’t even think about them as stories. But I can imagine that you could compile a book probably this thick of other stories. We all have stories about our lives.

Deborah Strahorn
We do, yeah, we all do.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So tell me this, what is the best story that you’ve ever told?

Deborah Strahorn
Oh wow, I think the one that I love the most is called “The Baobab Tree” or “The Baobao Tree.” And it’s a story about stories, and it’s a story that shows us we all have stories to give and to share. And it talks about an old man in Africa who is a griot, and he’s getting older, and he walks around sharing his stories every day with people and animals. And the only thing he asks in return is that they too share one of their stories. And so they do, and as he gets older, his back becomes bent with the weight of all the stories that he carries. And he wonders, once I am gone, who will I give my stories to? And so he sees a bird, and the bird says, “Oh, I’m too busy,” and he sees an elephant, and the elephant doesn’t have time. And then he tries to talk to the people, and the people say, “Oh, go away with your stories, we don’t have time.” So he sits beneath the baobab tree, which is broad and mighty and strong, and he starts telling his stories, hoping that just one passerby will take one of his stories. And as he tells his stories to the wind, the stories go up into that tree, and that tree grows bigger and broader and strong. And when he has told his last story, he closes his eyes, and he’s at peace. And they say if you should just so happen to find that mighty baobab tree, and you stand beneath its broad, strong branches, and the wind begins to blow, those stories will fall down on you like the soft, gentle rain, and you can take them wherever you go, from mountain to mountain, valley to valley, village to village, and river to river. And that’s what we all must do. We must take the stories of our history, of our people, of our experiences, and we have to share them with one another. Because in sharing our stories, we’re touching other people, other souls, and we’re giving them food for life. Because you never know when your experience is going to touch someone else in a positive way.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And that’s very true. I agree with that, definitely. You never know who you’re going to touch.

Deborah Strahorn
Exactly.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And I think what happens also with stories is that you find that your story is not unique.

Deborah Strahorn
Exactly, exactly. Your story is your story, but other people, you know, have the same experiences. Your experiences don’t affect you the way they affect other people and vice versa because we’re all individuals, but we all are having the same human experience.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Right, human experience, right. So before you became a professional storyteller, what did you do? Were you in another career?

Deborah Strahorn
Yes, I was, and that’s really interesting that you asked because I really started blossoming after high school when I went to college. I joined Black Theater Workshop, and that’s when I just really cut loose and came into myself, expressing myself through theater. And growing up, I always wanted to be an actress because I just was in love with the theater. So I got a chance to perform theater in college, but I was a communications major, so storytelling, theater, you know, it’s communications. But before I moved to Atlanta and became a storyteller, I was a newspaper reporter for the Chicago Citizen newspaper.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
I remember that newspaper. Their office, I think, was on 87th Street.

Deborah Strahorn
87th and King Drive, yes.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Deborah Strahorn
Yes, so I moved to Atlanta because our family founded the Atlanta Daily World newspaper, which at one time was the oldest black daily in the United States. And so I had never met that side of the family because that was my mother’s side of the family, and as I said, she passed away from breast cancer when I was 14. So I met that side of the family, and at that time in Atlanta, you know, when you come to a new city, you’re exploring and checking out all the cultural events. And I went to a storytelling event at this place called the Wren’s Nest, which is the old Joel Chandler Harris home, who is the one who tells the Uncle Remus tales. And at that storytelling event was a storyteller by the name of Akbar En Hotep, who is truly the master storyteller in Atlanta. And when I heard him do stories and using puppets, I said, “That’s it, that’s what I want to do.” And so that year, I went to my first NABS convention, that’s the National Association of Black Storytellers, and I think it was in Virginia or Winston-Salem. And I joined Kumba Storytellers, and then I took a workshop on how to become a storyteller. And after that, I had the support of various members of the organization, and I just started opening my mouth and telling stories, well, learning stories and, you know, doing more reading. But that’s when it came about.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So where do you find your stories?

Deborah Strahorn
Well, I do a lot of reading. Sometimes you hear other people telling stories at different events, but you’re always looking for that next story. And you don’t always tell new stories because some of the stories, like the baobab tree, you know, it fits various occasions. So I’m always looking for stories for different audiences. So like I said, you hear other tellers doing stories, you do research, like if it’s a particular theme, like right now we’re into Halloween and fall festivals, so you might tell stories about fall. One of my favorite stories is “The Scarecrow’s Hat,” and that’s a great fall story because it talks about the fact that we all have something that someone else wants or needs. So this is a story about barter and trade, about give and take, and it’s a change story because everything is linked. And the chicken goes around the farmyard, and he realizes that every animal has something that someone else needs, and he helps them trade things. And at the end of the story, the scarecrow gives him his hat, and it’s just such a wonderful story. So you just spend a lot of time in the library or online, you know, looking for stories.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So now you tell stories to children and adults. Do you tell the same stories to children that you do to adults, or do you…

Deborah Strahorn
Sometimes.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Deborah Strahorn
Sometimes I do, but for adults, mostly I’m going to do what’s called historical portraits, and those are portraits of African-American men and women, some who are famously known, some lesser-known people. And one of the stories that I wrote, I wrote a story about Josephine Baker, and I did the research to find out that she was a spy in the French Resistance. And so I wrote a story that talks about how when the Germans took over her home, they made her eat poison and how she outsmarted them and lived. And it’s not a story that I made up, you know, the facts are there, but I just put a story together, and it’s just really an exciting story. And it lets you know another part of her because a lot of people know that she did the banana dance and she danced and sang, you know, danced nude. I don’t do any of that, but it’s just such a rich story about how she was an outspoken civil rights activist. So I take historical portraits like that to share with adults.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, now with your storytelling, do you have—I read something, well, I didn’t take a class, but I did have a book where this professor talks about the art of storytelling. So did you do any special—I know you read and got a lot, you know, you researched characters, but did you take any courses or anything about storytelling, you know, like beginning, middle, end, you know, all the aspects?

Deborah Strahorn
Oh yes, oh yes. Well, I didn’t take any courses per se, but workshops, you know, I didn’t go to school for it, but you know you can get a storytelling degree at Tennessee—oh my gosh, it’s the university in Jonesboro, Tennessee, where they do have a storytelling degree. And I didn’t do that, but I’ve taken several workshops, and you attend conferences. They have all sorts of conferences all over the United States, but the National Storytelling Network in Jonesboro, Tennessee, that’s like the cream of the crop when you attend their conferences and workshops. And the workshops can be anything from how to tell scary stories to how to tell healing stories. And I want to talk about the healing stories for just a moment.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, but before we do that, Deborah, are we kind of at the halfway point?

Deborah Strahorn
Okay.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And I gotta do a couple of commercials.

Deborah Strahorn
I know about that.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And so when we come back, I want you to tell us all about that.

Deborah Strahorn
Okay.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, all right, we will be right back to hear some more of this fascinating woman. I am really fascinated. We’ll be right back. [Music]

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Hi, we are back with Deborah Strahorn. All right, sorry I had to interrupt you, but you know, you gotta pay for stuff, so…

Deborah Strahorn
Absolutely, I understand that.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Continue.

Deborah Strahorn
Well, we were talking about healing stories. All of us go through things in life where we have experiences, it may be trauma, maybe stress, incarceration, different things that we need healing from. And so one of the things I learned at a workshop at a conference is that there are healing stories, and there are ways to get people to share their stories without them having to tell their story out loud if they don’t want to. That’s part of it because in telling and sharing, there is often healing. But one of the workshops shows that how you can tell your story first to connect with a person. So for example, if I’ve been through some sort of abuse, I tell my story about abuse, and then that breaks down the walls for the other participants, and then they may be willing to orally share their story or part of their story. But if they’re not, one of the things we encourage them to do is to journal. So when you’re journaling, you don’t have to share it with anybody, you just put down what happened. You might just put down a word, you might just put down a date, it might be just a name. And then maybe somebody else wants to come up and share a part of their story. And as we are listening and sharing and opening up, the walls start coming down. We’re not only talking to one another, but we’re listening to one another, we’re empathizing with one another. So that’s just one example of how stories can be healing because many of us have the same or similar experiences, and when you’re able to open up and share, it’s a process of healing.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
You know, I want to run this by you. There are people who have those stories, and I guess you would call them healing stories, but they don’t have the courage, you know what I’m saying? They don’t have the courage to write it down, but they don’t have the—and definitely don’t have the courage to share it. What advice would you give someone who’s got this on the inside of them but doesn’t have that courage?

Deborah Strahorn
Well, I think sometimes it’s just that people don’t know where to start. They don’t know where to start, you know, and they don’t know who to go to because if I take this information to you, what are you going to do with it? And it also depends on what situation the person is in. Am I in it now, and if I share it with you, what’s going to happen to me? So I really don’t know the answer to that question, but a lot of times when, say for example, if we put together a workshop where we went into a youth detention center, and we just went in and told stories, but we went in with drums as well, and we had enough drums for some of the incarcerated youth to use the drums. And so just in that short time, it was like a healing workshop because we were able to tell our stories, let them participate by drumming, and then we might have said a word or two to them that let them know you’re not alone, keep moving, you’re not going to be here forever, but when you get out, you know, maybe these are the next steps. So it just depends on what situation you’re in where you can connect with people. Sometimes people are in therapy, and that’s a way to tell their story, but I would encourage everybody to just start jotting it down, whether anyone else is going to read it or not, just get it out of you and write it down.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, I have a friend who’s an author, and she wrote a book, and it was—she was purging, and it was—the name of her book, and I can’t say the name, I can’t say the name of it because she did publish it, and she did market it at book fairs, but the name of the book was “The Shadows of a…” and she, you know, and we were in a book writing, an author’s writing kind of workshop, and she was so afraid that we would judge her because of her past life, and she wanted to make sure that she wrote it under a pen name because she thought people would judge her. But as she was, you know, as we were helping her with her book, when the ladies started telling their experiences, you know, she got more and more comfortable because she was so afraid to share. She needed help in writing it, but she was so afraid to share it. And I think that holds a lot of people back from really telling their story, I mean really telling their story because of being afraid that people would judge them.

Deborah Strahorn
Absolutely, it absolutely does. It holds a lot of us back, but I think you said two good things. She could write it under, you know, a pen name, and she could change the names of the people who are involved. And a lot of times when we are writing biographical stories, sometimes people say, “Well, let me change the names because I don’t want to offend or hurt anyone.” And that’s perfectly okay. If writing the book is therapeutic for you, and if you have a story to be told, go ahead, go ahead, because we all have stuff, we all have things going on in our lives, and we can’t change our past. We can’t change our past, but we can try to control our future and go in another direction. But I just think stories and writing are so therapeutic, and we don’t do enough of it. We don’t do enough of it.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Now, when your mom passed, was there a favorite story, but did you need to write a story in order to heal, a healing story regarding your mom?

Deborah Strahorn
I didn’t need to write at that point. I was only 14 years old, but she laid such a good foundation, and I just had such happy memories of her, even though it took me over 30 years to be able to tell that first story. And it’s called “Memories” because it was the memory of that birthday party that she gave me to celebrate my birthday, even though she knew she was passing away. And then the second story that I did was called “The Ants,” about all the ants that came and swarmed over us to take care of us after she passed. And so I’m trying to come up with one more story about my mother to make it a trilogy, but the healing was there because there were so many family members and friends that surrounded us during that time. But the writing is just something that I’ve done in later years.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, well, I know one of your sisters, so tell me a sister story.

Deborah Strahorn
[Music] I don’t know if I have anything that I can tell you.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
She’s not in the room in the hotel with you.

Deborah Strahorn
She’ll look at this later. But you know what, one of the wonderful things about my sister is my sister—and this is so funny—when I moved away to Atlanta, I thought I was only going to be there for two years, get it out of my system, and come on back. So year three, four, five, she’s like, “Well, when are you gonna, you know, get over this and come on back home?” And I’m like, “You know, I am home here in Atlanta.” So my sister has always been the type of person to give me gifts, to send me care packages and goodie boxes. And so it got to the point where she would send a box of goodies to work, and it would get to work, and so all the girls would come around and say, “Okay, what did we get today?” And they just wish they had a sister like mine because she was just always showering me with gifts. So that is my sister’s story, and that’s why I’m here celebrating with her today, to try to give a little bit of that back.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, that’s wonderful, that’s wonderful. I don’t have a sister. I always wanted a sister. I only have brothers, you know, but I guess I could write some stories.

Deborah Strahorn
Okay, I’m sure you could, I’m sure you could. You should write your stories about your brothers. And another thing that I wanted to share is because part of what I do is I teach a storytelling class at an elementary school, and I have taught from kindergarten to fifth grade. And this is really at the heart of what I do because storytelling is helping youth to find their voice. It’s giving them a voice to speak, to express, to take a stand. And at some point, all of us are going to have to get up in front of someone and speak, whether we know it or not. And storytelling is just a fun way to help them learn but to give them voice. And you should see some of those little faces. They’re so afraid and timid to get up in front of the class at first. But like I said, literacy is storytelling is the voice of literacy.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So now, okay, tell me about this Oakland Cemetery capturing the spirit. I understand that you all have cemetery tours. Tell me all about that. Halloween is coming up.

Deborah Strahorn
Yes, Oakland Cemetery has the best programming of any organization in the entire state of Georgia. They’ve got something going on all the time. There are so many different tours that you can take, and these are tours based on the people who are buried there. They have the sports legends tour, you can do a love tour, they have a tour of the mayors who are buried there. I could go on and on and on. They have garden sales where in the spring and the fall, they have a greenhouse, and they grow plants in the greenhouse, and they put those on sale. You can go through walks in the cemetery, people have picnics there, they get married there, they have Juneteenth programs, they have Run Like Hell races for adults, Run Like Heck races for children, you know, 5K races. And they even have a program called Tunes from the Tomb that they just finished, where they have three stages set up with jazz, blues, country music. But the highlight of the year is what I am about to participate in starting this weekend, and I think this might be the 16th or 17th year. But they have a program called the Spirit of Oakland, and what they do is they do the research on six graves at a time, the people who are buried in these graves. And each year, you can enjoy a tour where we dress like the person who is buried there, and you can hear stories about that person’s life. And they take you in groups of about 10 or 20 at a time, you stop at the first grave, and the storyteller tells the story of that person, and then you move on to the next grave. It’s an exciting program. This year, it’s taking place over three weekends. As I said, it begins tonight, as a matter of fact, it begins tonight on the 14th, and it runs through the 30th. And it’s just a wonderful program. Now, why does Oakland do this? Because it helps to not only pay for upkeep of the cemetery, but it’s about history. It’s about learning the history of the cemetery and the history of the people who are buried there. So it’s the most wonderful program that you could ever imagine. I thought it was morbid when I first heard about it, but when you go, it’s just so amazing. And I guess I can tell this now, but this year’s character is—I’m going to be Birdie Gaither, who is an African-American woman born in 1883 in South Carolina. And she was a hostess in Atlanta, meaning that she was one of the women who worked behind the scenes in the civil rights movement to help move it forward. And she helped prepare food for the different protests and marches because that was one of the most daunting tasks of organizing a large-scale protest was food. And so she hosted people in her home, she also worked for different meetings in organizations like SNCC and SCLC, and just hosting different leaders and meetings in her home. So I didn’t know anything about her before Oakland, but I’ve portrayed other African-American women like doctors and women who were socialites, and it’s just amazing the history that you can find in a cemetery.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So do you dress in the costumes?

Deborah Strahorn
Yes, you dress like that person would have dressed. So I dress like a person from 1883. We don’t dress in Halloween costumes, but it’s done very respectfully. And this program is also raising funds to care for the African-American historical burial grounds at Oakland. So they have different areas in the cemetery, so they even talk about the history of that section and how African Americans came to be buried there. They have a tour that talks about the Confederate section of the cemetery, and you just learn all about the history of the cemetery in terms of segregation and African-American rights. One year, I even did a story as part of a couple where I was a black wife to a white man who invented Palmer’s Cocoa Butter Lotion and how we were married at a time when black and white marriages were not legal in Georgia. And so it’s stories like that that make the audience go, “Hmm.”

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Right.

Deborah Strahorn
And so when you can see a mixed crowd standing there listening to your story, and it just—people just open up because they say, “Wow, they didn’t know that this was happening,” or they didn’t know that African Americans were legislators. One couple that we did a couple of years ago, both the husband and wife had fathers who were in the Georgia State Legislature and the Alabama State Legislature before Reconstruction. So if you’re not a historian, you know, when do you really think about things like that, or how would you know about things like that? So Oakland is just like a wellspring of information because you’re just always learning, being informed. And I think this is—it opens up conversations about race relations when you can have this type of experience.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
This is so unique. I mean, I had never heard of that, and when I thought cemetery tours, I don’t know.

Deborah Strahorn
Yeah, and it’s really a wonderful program because when you come to the cemetery, they have music playing. Each year, they have a different type of band. One year, they had a jazz band, another year, they had a harpist, and you’re able to buy food and drinks and souvenirs. They have books on the history of Oakland, so as you’re standing there in line, you know, there’s so much going on. But it’s one of the best programs in Atlanta, and if you Google Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta and see all the programming that they have all year round, it’s amazing. It’s amazing.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
I think I have it here where I think I do, where they can—oh, here it is, right there.

Deborah Strahorn
There you go.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Right, so if they go to www.oaklandcemetery.com, then they can see and be educated on all those different programs.

Deborah Strahorn
Absolutely.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And I’ve been to Atlanta, you know, but I never knew about this, you know what I’m saying? And that would be something that I would really like to see because at first, I thought, wait a minute, nighttime, cemetery, wait, black people.

Deborah Strahorn
I know exactly what you mean. That was my thought, that was my thought at first too. But listen, we’re gonna have to make it a day in 2022, you and me, Atlanta, Oakland Cemetery. I want to see you there, I want to see you there.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
You will, is it a day? So now, I don’t have how anyone can reach you, and so I need—I want to put it in here. So how can they reach you?

Deborah Strahorn
Well, my website is stories, the letter N, 3D.org, and stories in the letter N, the number three, the letter D.org, stories in 3D.org. And then my email and phone number is listed there.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
There it is.

Deborah Strahorn
There you go.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
All right, this has been fascinating.

Deborah Strahorn
For me too, for me too. It was a joy.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
I mean, you know what, you learn something new every day.

Deborah Strahorn
Every day.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
This is something that I had never heard of, and I wanted to thank your sister, Karen, who she said, “Oh, I have a sister, and she’s a storyteller, and I think she would make an amazing guest.” So I thought, okay, well, let me look her up, you know, and then because I thought maybe nepotism.

Deborah Strahorn
But she’s my best promoter, she’s my best friend. I have to put her on the payroll.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
But after I looked you up and looked, I’m like, oh my God, look at this. This is something we need to have this here in Chicago, you know.

Deborah Strahorn
You do. There is a storytelling association in Chicago. Yes, they are a member of NABS. You can look it up. I forget the name because in Atlanta, it’s Kumba, and I forget the name of the Chicago association, but I’ll make sure that you…

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Definitely, definitely, I definitely, I will look that up, you know. Now, I’m going to talk about my story in a minute when I do my commercial because I did write my story, well, the story of my mom and my relationship with her as she got older and how that really, I guess, transitioned into a book and then into workshops and then into coaching. And it was a story that at first I didn’t want to tell, but the Lord knocked me upside my head and said, “Tell this story, tell it, tell it, sir.” But Deborah, thank you so much for being my guest. You have been, well, I like to say educational, informational, and motivational, and just entertaining. I really appreciate you. I have learned so much. I have learned so much.

Deborah Strahorn
I want to thank you so much. I want to thank you for having me. You are the coach, the influencer, and I just want to be just like you when I grow up. So thanks for having me.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Thank you, Deborah. So you have the rest of your evening be beautifully blessed, and win some money.

Deborah Strahorn
I got you on that one. I’m gonna try real hard.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
All right, take care. Bye-bye.

Deborah Strahorn
All right, bye-bye.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Wow, that was amazing, that was amazing. You know, you learn something new every single day. So I’m going to keep this on here. This is stories, her website is storiesin3d.org. And if you’re interested, and I know you are, in what’s going on with the Oakland Cemetery, just go to www.oaklandcemetery.com. This has been amazing. Now for, I guess I would call it a shameless plug, here we go. [Music]