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06/29/2016 08:30 AMWhen Gene Nichols retired several years ago from the public relations firm he had led for 18 years, he wasn’t yet ready just to sit at home relaxing. What he really wanted was a new project on which to focus, one that would engage his heart and his mind in the way his work once did.
So returning to his roots as a journalist, he created Life Story Cam, a community service to help senior citizens over 65 years document their life stories “as a gift to younger generations of family members and friends”.
His first interviews were in 2012 of seniors living in Bloomfield, New Jersey, his hometown at the time. For each one- to two-hour interview, he edited the recorded material to create the finished product, a 15 minute video.
Gene announced his new community service in the Bloomfield Buzz, a local publication. In it her described his process. First, to help senior citizens prepare for their interview, he would give them a list of questions in advance “designed to draw out the subject’s personal history.” Each subject was also asked to bring photographs that Gene could scan during their appointment and use the visuals to mix in with the interview footage in the final product.
“Ninety minutes of video will be edited down to 15 minutes. [I] will upload the video to the Internet and give each subject a free DVD copy,” as Gene wrote in his promotional announcement.
Now, cut to Old Saybrook, the town to which he moved to live full-time in January and in the same area where he had spent family summer vacations for decades. As he now is settling in to his new community, he’s now ready to offer his new neighbors the same community service of Life Cam Story that he offered to seniors in New Jersey.
“I suppose my craving to do this was because I never really knew much about my father’s childhood,” says Gene. “My father was [among] the first of the illegal immigrants. He was born in 1900 in Russia into a very privileged family. His father was a colonel under the tsar and lived in St. Petersburg. My father followed in his footsteps, going to military school.”
“[In 1917], while he was interning as a cabin boy in the Russian Navy, the second Russian Revolution of the Bolsheviks occurred,” says Gene.
And for a young Russian man of privilege, this societal upheaval changed everything.
Members of the privileged classes under the tsar were deemed enemies of the new Bolshevik state and were now being routinely imprisoned or even murdered. Gene’s father suddenly realized that if he returned with the ship to a Russia under Bolshevik control, he would face either prison or death. Not liking either prospect, he decided instead to jump ship when the Russian naval vessel stopped in New Orleans. Years later, Vladimir Mihaelivich Nikolayeff became a naturalized U.S. citizen, and the family name was shortened to Nichols, the surname Gene now carries.
Everything Gene eventually learned about his father and his life in Russia came from conversations with his mother—his father did not want to talk about his former life.
“These times are more threatening that at any other time in my lifetime. The only thing we’ve got to rely on is ourselves,” says Gene.
What he says we should turn our focus on is our loved ones, the treasures of the past and present.
“When you leave [a record of] your life story, you are leaving a gift for loved ones and [for others] far into the future,” says Gene. “My thrust is to tell the story of what made you who you are today sitting before this camera, the trajectory of your life. It’s not for you. It’s for the others who surround you and will succeed you.”
And sitting with Gene, it’s clear he loves a good story, whether it’s his own or someone else’s.
When he started as a journalist, the stories he told were in the feature stories he wrote for newspapers serving New York City and Long Island. As those papers began to struggle financially, he made a shift to a new career in public relations with 3M in New York City. But his passion for telling people’s stories didn’t end. While at 3M, he initiated the firm’s first sponsorship of public television shows that focused on controversial social issues, including one called The Puzzle Children, narrated by Julie Andrews and addressing the issue of children with disabilities.
Other corporations began to take notice of the positive press that 3M got for their sponsorship, and so when Gene opened his own PR firm with 3M as his first client, they also asked for the firm’s help. In this way, the Nichols firm’s specialty focused on public and even commercial television public relations work.
Gene says that over the course of his career, he sat in many control rooms as spots were recorded and shows were taped. He also once used his PR skills also to promote his own invention, the Smitten Mitten, selling more than 4,500 units after the product was picked up by several national print and TV outlets (The product was a fleece muff with cuffs that allowed couples to hold hands in winter, but to keep their hands warm).
On one of his public TV PR projects he worked with famous chef Julia Child on the last 13 episodes of her public television show.
“She was the most wonderful, generous person you could ever meet,” recalled Gene.
At one point, Gene had arranged to pick up Child at the Phoenix airport before an event. He asked her where she’d like to go to dinner. She picked a restaurant in Scottsdale and so he made a reservation there for two. When they arrived, Julia first went off to the restroom; while she was gone, he was seated for dinner at an undesirable table right next to the kitchen. Then Child arrived at the table, and suddenly they were honored guests, getting a private tour of the kitchen—and a much better table.
For Gene, things that area manufactured have little meaning. What matters are hugs, experiences, and the stories we tell and record. That’s why Gene wants to know the stories of your life.
To contact Gene Nichols to arrange an appointment for an interview, send an email to him at lifestorycam@gmail.com.