Host: Kate Tellers

Kate Tellers: [00:00:02] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm your host, Kate Tellers. 

For 2022, the 25th Anniversary of The Moth, we've been counting down and celebrating every year The Moth's been around. This episode, we're at 2012, which is the year we formalized our education program. Through workshops and StorySLAMS, the education program provides students and teachers with a forum to share personal stories with one another then and on a stage and often on this very podcast. 

EDU reaches hundreds of middle and high school students and teachers every year, all across the country. And at The Moth, we know that every level of education can be story worthy, which is why, since 2006, we've been developing stories from Barnard College Alums for a special event at their annual reunion. 

We'll be playing one of those stories, and then I'll be chatting a bit with my coauthors about how it relates to a conversation we've been having when we talk about our new now New York Times bestselling book, How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth. Before we listen, I should note, this was before we had a podcast or radio program, so the audio here is not perfect. We think it's worth it. Here's Dorothy Storck. 

[applause] 

Dorothy Storck: [00:01:18] Hello. Hi, I transferred up, because I was working part time and went to get a job at the McLean Trucking Company, because the campus library was only paying 50 cents, they were paying a buck. The Dean at Whitman sent a committee down to see if the McLean Trucking Company was appropriate for Duke co-ed. It wasn't. So, I transferred to Barnard for my senior year. I was the January 1951 graduate. 

Around that time, the Korean War was ratcheting up. There was a Marine recruiting sergeant on campus. He offered me this kind of deal. I could go to the Platoon Leaders course in Quantico, Virginia for the summer. And then, when I graduated, I would be a lieutenant in the United States Marines. And I thought, okay, it looked great in green. [audience laughter] The guys would have to salute me. [audience laughter] 

As an English lit major with a specialty in Chaucer, it was iffy [audience laughter] whether I could get a job to support in New York City. [audience laughter] So, when I was down at Quantico that summer, I met a Marine pilot, a captain. And he asked me back for the New Year's Ball at Quantico. I should have been studying for my finals. But I, at 1 o’clock in the morning instead was sitting in my apple green evening dress with the shoes dyed to match it in the Quantico Officers Club with my Marine captain who was in full dress and gorgeous, and the band had gone home and he said, “Let fly to the Jacksonville Naval Air Station for breakfast.” And I said, “Sure.” 

So, we did. We went out to the runway and got in a C45 Beechcraft. Security was, what can I say, somewhat more lax in those days. [audience laughter] We took off and we flew and we flew. It was like in most January mornings. It was dark. And we kept on flying. After a while, I heard him yelling into what I thought was the radio, “Mayday, Mayday.” [chuckles] And I said, “What's up?” He said, “I don't have to tell you this, but we're running out of gas.” [audience laughter] He said, “Have you ever jumped before?” [audience laughter] And I said, “What?” [chuckles] He said, “Taking a parachute jump.” And I said, “No.” He said, “Well, this is how you do it.” [audience laughter] He said, “You go on and you count to 10,000 by 1,000. 1,000 and 2,000.” And then, he put a marine green parachute on me, which was a slightly darker green than my apple greeny evening dress. [audience laughter] 

I looked out and it was still dark. [audience laughter] I kept thinking, church steeples. [audience laughter] He said, “You go first.” So, I did. [audience laughter] And what had happened is that it was a chest pack, he put it on upside down. So, when I pulled the ripcord, I came over with my taffeta gown going over my head. And from the ground, had anybody been looking, it also looked like Mary Poppins. [audience laughter] 

Well, he landed in a tree and I landed in the swamps on the edge of the-- it was the Okefenokee Swamp near Waycross, Georgia. Any of you know that? And for a while, I couldn't see what was grunting around me. It turned out to be those hairy pigs with tusks. There were about 10 of them. He was in the tree and he kept yelling to me to go get help. [audience laughter] So, I did. 

So, I went out, finally got. It was coming up. Oh, I think it was about 6 o’clock, just dawn. And I finally found this dirt road with this farmer coming along in one of those rusty implements tractor. And I said, “Excuse me, I'm Lieutenant Storck, United States Marines. I just bailed out of an airplane. [audience laughter] Can you help me?” He took off down the road and got the sheriff, who got the posse. We got Ralph out of the tree, and then we went over to see where the aircraft might have landed after it finally ran out of gas. And that was in Mr. Thigpen's backyard. 

Well, Mr. Thigpen had a farm just outside of Waycross, Georgia. And I said, “Oh, Mr. Thigpen, we're looking at the tail of the plane rising out of his cabbages.” And I said, “Mr. Thigpen, I am so sorry.” [audience laughter] And he said, “There, there, my dear. As long as you're all right.” The Marines paid him millions. [audience laughter] 

Now, they sent down a plane for me to fly us back to [unintelligible [00:07:19] from the Jacksonville, Florida Naval Air Station. But they wouldn't let me on the plane, because the official version was that I was out of uniform. [audience laughter] So, Ralph flew back, and I took the [unintelligible [00:07:36] train back to Bartner just in time to take my finals in Mr. Fogel's classroom. My friend from Bronxville, Betsy Wade, leaned over, she waves at me, she said, “How are the holidays?” [audience laughter] And I said, “Catch me later at Ralph's court martial later that month.” [audience laughter] I said he had been very brave, putting a parachute on me and everything. 

I never saw him again, because it got so much publicity. He married his old girlfriend from Detroit. But I thought what might be a good idea before I got my Barnard degree signed by Ike Eisenhower, before I became commissioned in the marines to transfer the air force, which I did before they could get me. And so, I served in that until 1965 when the air force and I had a disagreement over some bombing they were doing in Southeast Asia. [audience laughter] And I took a job for $95 a week at a newspaper. But that's another story. Thank you. 

[cheers and applause] 

Kate tellers: [00:09:02] That was Dorothy Storck. Dorothy Storck was an air force major, reporter and newspaper columnist. She passed away in 2015 at the age of 88. Now, I'm going to take you behind the scenes of how we helped Dorothy develop her story, and talk a bit about truth in storytelling with two of my fellow, How To Tell A Story, coauthors Sarah Austin Jenness and Jenifer Hixson. 

First, Jennifer, way back in 2006, you worked with our storyteller, Dorothy Storck. What was that like? 

Jenifer: [00:09:32] Well, Dorothy is one of the most incredible storytellers. Okay. Dorothy lived a very storied life. This was not the only story of her life that seemed incredible. And she went on to win a Pulitzer Prize, so she was esteemed journalist. But the first time I spoke to Dorothy, it was over a crackly telephone line. She told me this story, and there was a little resistance to even my, “Wow. What? Wow” She was just like, “No nonsense. Yup. Then we got in the plane and we took off.” When we hung up, I wondered, could what I have just heard be true? Is it possible that someone you just walked out on the tarmac and took a plane and then [chuckles] jumped out of a plane and the plane crashed? Her flowing down with the taffeta gown [chuckles] upside down over her head, landing in a pig pen. Wow. 

And so, it wasn't that I didn't exactly believe her, but I wanted backup. So, I thought, surely, this would have been an extraordinary event even then. And so, she had mentioned Waycross, Georgia. And so, I rode to the library there, and I said, “Hey.” And I also had, because it was New Year's Eve, I knew it was New Year's Eve, 1951. So, I had a date. It's a small town there. I wrote to the librarian. And about two weeks later, I got a big manila envelope that had the clipping. It told the story in an amused way as someone fell from the sky in our town. [laughs] And yeah, that verified the story. 

Kate tellers: [00:11:30] Was it just the series of events that you found amazing? Was there anything outside of that series of events that felt untrue to you that made you sleuth? 

Jenifer: [00:11:38] Well, I was not aware that you would go on a date and they'd be like, “What do you say we fly down to Florida for breakfast?” That already seemed like, “Really? Did people do that?” And that somebody who I presume had been drinking, and then I guess him not being able to operate the plane showed that seemed yeah, she said, as she says in the story, security was somewhat lax. That seemed crazy. 

I don't know, I've had some crazy dates, but dang, I never did anything like that. Yeah, falling out of a plane, just suddenly with no training in a ball gown, parachuting out of the sky, yeah, it's one of the most extraordinary stories I've ever heard ever in all of Moth history. Later on, I spoke to some people who were-- and they said, “Yeah, they used to do that a lot.” You'd fly down. It was like borrowing dad's car, taking some of these airplanes. I don't know, some military guy, I spoke to once told me, “Yeah, security did used to be pretty lax.” 

Kate tellers: [00:12:40] Yeah, it seems like there are so many holes in the story, but it's just a window into a different era where those aren't the holes that they are today. 

Jenifer: [00:12:48] Yes. It's also Dorothy's style that's just like, “Here's the facts. Here they are. I know. Aren't they extraordinary?” Boom. Just lays them out there. She wasn't someone to milk it for the drama necessarily. She's like, “Here's the crazy thing that happened,” and then moving on. 

Kate tellers: [00:13:03] Yes. Very Dorothy Parker. Did you address this with her? Like, this is so extraordinary. I don't know if the audience is going to believe you or try to get something out of her that might be more truthful. Did you worry about that in the delivery even of the story? 

Jenifer: [00:13:22] Yes, I definitely worried about that. But Dorothy was like, “Well, too bad if they don't believe it. It's the truth. Nothing but the truth here. I'm a journalist. I don't make things up.” But of course, I very tenderly brought that up. I never want to say someone like, “I think you're full of it. What? How could this be?” Yes, I expressed wonder, I expressed, “Wow, can you lean into that a little bit more, because how exactly--”

Yeah. But Dorothy knew. She was a storyteller on paper. Actually, if you look up some of her articles too, they're very tight, they're terse, there's not a lot of flowery detail. That was her style totally. “Here's all the things that happened.” Boom, boom, boom. Wow. 

Kate tellers: [00:14:06] Sarah, when we were writing, we talked so much about truth. And of course, there's a difference between truth, an extraordinary situation or series of events that may or may not be made up, and then the emotional truth of the story, which is what we really spent so much time talking about. But in our discussion of how we sense truth in a story, you had an interesting situation with a teller who did ring really true. What was that you shared with us? 

Sarah: [00:14:33] In 2011, I was working with a gentleman. We'll call him Al. Al lived in the Bronx, and we were working together on a story for a night that was all about the Vietnam War. I went up to the Bronx every day to work with him. He was in an assisted living home for people who were trying to get back on their feet. Yeah, I must have been up there every day or every other day for three weeks. We sat and we workshopped his story that he had started in a Moth Community Workshop. 

It was an extraordinary story of losing all feeling after being drafted into the Vietnam War as a very young boy when he was living in the Bronx. He did three tours in Vietnam, and he saw so much death and atrocity and just had no feeling left. He was working on a story. It was a harrowing story. He could barely speak. He had a very raspy voice. He was always very excited to see me and worked really hard on his story. But the story was all about how he finally got feeling back when he killed another in combat. It was a terrible and beautiful story, and one that felt very representative of how complicated the Vietnam War was. 

I remember when he told the story that night at the Players Club. Again, it was the summer of 2011, and we set him up with a special microphone because of the way he spoke, and he didn't have much breath. It was one of those nights-- It was like we were breathing collectively. Kate, like you say, we were breathing one breath. It was really beautiful, and I was so proud of him, so proud of the story. I felt like it was a real triumph for him. Again, it was one of those extremely complicated stories about a very complicated war. I was so proud that we found him. 

I remember just how hard it was to get the story to the place where it was, because again, Moth stories are 10 minutes to 12 minutes, and this was a very long story for him, took up many years of his life and we made some cuts. But I felt like the heart was really there and everyone seemed moved by it. 

So, many months later, after the creative review, we decided the story was good enough to move onto the radio. Everyone really liked it in audio. We moved it on to a very special radio episode. And then, we got complaints, tons and tons of complaints, and rightfully so, from other veterans of the war. And they said, “This guy is not in any of the veteran's logs, and certain details of his story don't pass muster and he's just basically a fraud.” And so, I, at this point, was no longer in touch with him. He had left this medical facility and I couldn't contact him. I looked him up and I just basically couldn't verify that he was who he said he was. 

It's so funny, I just relistened to the story. It's in our archive now and it's marked, do not air. We pulled it from the air right away, and we sent apologies to the veterans who had written in. It aired for a very short time before we pulled it. It was my fault for not looking it up. There was no way that I thought this story was false. There was no way. I mean, I sat with him and I talked with him for weeks and weeks and weeks. We cried. And he said, “I'm not sure how to phrase this and what to put in the story. There are too many details. I saw so much death.”

He goes into excruciating detail about just very vivid, brutal scenes like Emily say of the war. I'm still shocked, and I'm still wondering what parts of it were not true. Was all of it not true? Did he serve under a different name? And then, what comes out are this idea of false memory, some people, especially with the Vietnam War, didn't get drafted or dodged the draft and had terrible guilt for it. And so, read so many books and were so knowledgeable about it that they almost have invented a past where they did serve. I don't know, maybe that's what he was doing. It just strikes me as so-- it's so sad and so odd, and it's just an unsolved mystery.

So, yeah, we pulled the story. It exists deep in our archives with a big sign that says, do not air. It remains one of the biggest mysteries of my career at The Moth. It's really unsettling. Because again, I've been directing stories for over 15 years now. There is an emotional quality and a backbone. When you're looking someone dead in the eye, and they are crying and lost in the memory and come back to reality and are trying to piece it together, you're like, “This is beyond an Academy Award performance. Beyond that. It has to be true,” but somehow it wasn't. 

I think it's such an interesting thing that you bring up this idea of false memory. Maybe he read so many accounts that he almost made himself believe that that what he was saying was true. I always laugh about how intensely we debated some of the lines in this book, but we did have that whole back and forth about should a story be honest or feel honest. This answers that it should be honest. He probably believed that he was telling you his story, even though maybe it was a compilation or a memory of a memory of memory of something he'd read. Not a memory of a memory of a memory of his own experience, which is what true stories are. 

Jenifer: [00:20:56] As someone who was in that rehearsal, I just have to second, Sarah, that it was completely convincing. I wept. Everybody in the room in the rehearsal wept. It was so real. He was feeling it, and it felt beautiful to witness him giving birth to this story that obviously cracked open his heart and meant so much to him. It was absolutely shocking that it wasn't true. 

Sarah: [00:21:24] Maybe parts of it were true, but there was PTSD involved. Again, maybe he served under a different name, or maybe-- See, my heart and my soul still thinks that part of it was true. You can tell, by the way, I'm saying this, [laughs] and there has to be some kernel in there, because it's defies all laws of sensibility for it to be totally untrue. But the name that he gave us did not match any of the veteran’s names from the Vietnam War. And so, many veterans said that the specificities of his story led them to believe that this was untrue. Maybe he conflated three different jobs into one. Sometimes storytellers do that. Maybe he got the name of the place wrong. 

I don't know which parts were true and which parts weren't true. Right before this, I found an email for him and I tried again to-- but the email bounced back. I don't know where this guy is. He called me right after the show, and he left a message on The Moth voicemail and he said, “I just want to thank you for helping me tell my story.” It just remains one of those unsolved mysteries, very frustrating experience, and one that I still have a hard time believing is true. I can't believe the untruth is true. 

And now, we do say in the book, stories are true as remembered by the storyteller. But we do say, if you say you're a veteran, we're going to check that. And that's because of this guy named Al. Because otherwise I would never check if you were a veteran. My God, thank you to all the veterans. But I would never say, “Are you really a veteran?” [chuckles] I would never have ever done that. 

Now, I'm going to say, “How do you spell your name? Which exactly were you in? When were your tours? What exactly did you do? Do you have any witnesses to verify that you were there?” But it's because of this gentleman, that's just sad, but it's just the way that it is. So, if you give us some things that we can fact check, we're going to fact check those, because I was just so trusting. I mean, this more than 10 years ago. So, I was pretty early on in my directing time here, and I just didn't even think to check, but now we do. 

I'm just thinking sometimes the moments that are the most emotionally charged become so charged with emotion that the way you process it, by reliving it can change the facts of it, because you're processing it over and over and over again. I'm remembering when I worked with Catherine on my story, there's a moment where I go to see my mom in her room on the night that she's dying, and she's pulling out her suitcase and I say, “What are you doing?” And she says, “I have to pack.” I have to explain that she doesn't need a suitcase. And to this day, my sister and I don't know who that happened to. Like, don't know who was in the room to have that conversation, because both of us remember it so vividly. 

Probably because on the night that my mom was dying, we were just both going in and out, coming in and out and reporting to each other, “This is what mommy's doing now. This is what she looks like now.” Just back and forth and back and forth. We just share the memory and the only other eyewitness is gone from this planet. So, we don't actually know who had that conversation. There was a time when we would both swear that we were in that room, because we just told that scene to each other so many times. It's a true exchange. And if we could roll back tape, it could be that it was my sister. But my sister and I have decided that it was probably with me, even though she remembered it at one point as her own too. We just had to decide that for our own closure. 

Sarah: [00:25:35] Well, at the end of the day, it is art. I think the collective we, but how it shows up in each person's story is the way the art shows up. I think it's just like now, Kate, if you said, as I was a veteran and going through this, [laughs] that would be a different story. If you were, like, when I came back from my tour and I was with my mother, I'd say, “Kate, I need to fact check that.” 

Jenifer: [00:26:00] Yes, my mother was packing up my Purple Heart. That's exactly right. 

Sarah: [00:26:02] That's exactly right. And I had to take a break. 

Jenifer: [00:26:07] I think that what this also speaks to in this thing that people are so curious about, I mean, I think all of us, in all of the interviews we've had recently, people are constantly asking about this idea of truth. Everyone's asking about the actual, factual, salacious details. Do they have to be true? And the hard truth is, yes, you have to tell the facts. You can't fake a Purple Heart in your Moth story. But the meat of our jobs so often is that process of helping people discover what's essentially true. 

I mean, that's to me, the most intimate part of this work is when you start asking people these deeper questions about how they felt, what truly was that experience to you and why is it in your memory and something that you're compelled to tell days and weeks and months or maybe even years later. 

Sarah: [00:26:56] I think in the end, the truth always wins. The truth is always more interesting than what is made up. 

Kate Tellers: [00:27:07] That's all for this week. We hope you enjoyed our look at truth in storytelling. If you want to dive even deeper, you can pick up, How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth, wherever you get your books. From all of us here at The Moth, have a story worthy week. 

Davy Sumner: [00:27:26] Kate Tellers is a storyteller host, senior director at The Moth, and coauthor of their fourth book, How to Tell a Story, which is available for pre order now. Her story, But Also Bring Cheese is featured in The Moth's All These Wonders: True Stories about Facing the Unknown, and her writing has appeared on McSweeney's and in The New Yorker. 

This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin Jenness, Sarah Jane Johnson, Marc Sollinger and me, Davy Sumner. The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jenifer Hixson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klutse, Suzanne Rust, Inga Glodowski and Aldi Kaza. All Moth stories are true, as remembered by storytellers. 

For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, The Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.