Devin Benge

April 21, 2006

Service Learning Project

Earl Mulderink

Service Learning Project Report:

Wes Benge Family History

When I was first told about this project I didn’t know what I was going to do, and to tell the honest truth, I thought that was a pretty big waist of time. I thought this because I didn’t see how History and service were related. I could see to an extent, but I figured it was just busy work. Now that I have done this, I would say that I was wrong, and I may have learned the most from this than from anything else this year.

For my project, I decided to write a history of my immediate family. I thought of doing my aunts and uncles, but I have thirty of them (counting spouses) and only a few of them live in Utah. I also decided to do a history of my immediate family because there is a lot about my family that I don’t know. I am the youngest of eight children, and the oldest is nearly twenty years older than I am. Because of these things, it kind of kept me from getting to know my older brothers ands sisters very well, and there was much about my family that I was lacking. I also felt that this would be a great project for my nieces and nephews and my future children to read; something to let them know about their parents and grandparents, and their aunts and uncles. I just feel that this would be good for all of my family and all future family members that may come into the world.

At first I wanted to try and travel and videotape all of my brothers and sisters and compile a movie with there memories and thoughts, but this became impossible because of the amount of travel required, and my obligations to school and work. What I ended up doing is interviewing my parents on video so that everyone can see them and hear their voices, even when they are gone. The next thing I did was I asked all of my brothers and sisters to write a short history of themselves and any memories they have of their siblings. I then compiled these and mostly just used their words, though I did take some liberty at editing the papers a little bit, but I tried to leave it as their words the best I could. I then compiled a history of my family and wrote a short history. With this and many old photos I found, I made a Benge family history book.

I got much support from my brothers and sisters in helping come up with the book, but the most help I got was with my parents who helped me come up with ideas and questions to ask my brothers and sisters, and they also drove down to Cedar City so that I could interview them on camera, because I couldn’t get work off.

The way I anticipated doing this was to do it a little bit a time. Call one of my brothers and ask him to send down a brief history of life, and then I would edit it, and fit it into the book. The way it really worked is I procrastinated so I was behind. Then I asked my family to help me out, and they all procrastinated it too. In the end it wasn’t until about a week before the project was due, and I was kind of freaking out that my family started to respond. So as much as I hate to admit this, I have done most all of the work over the past too weeks, and probably two thirds of it over the past week.

What I have done to finish this project, I have taken all of the my brothers and sisters history’s that they have given me, and I have combined them with photos that I have collected, and then I have printed up this, along with a very basic family history that I collected though my siblings and my parents, and I have printed it up on nice paper and had it bound into a book format. Then I took the video of my parents, and I have burned onto a DVD disk, so that all of my family can easily watch, and hopefully enjoy it.

Probably the hardest thing that I had to do for this project was interviewing my parents. First it was hard to get a time and a place we could all meet. The second thing that was difficult about it was that we didn’t have the best equipment. We ended up using a digital camera and can do ten minutes of video. I am very happy though that I had access to this camera, and that now I have secured a video recording of my parents. I hate to look to far in the future, but I know that someday they will die, but now I have a way to show the people who they were and what they stood for and thought. And think that is the purpose of history: to teach people from the experience of others. It is a good feeling to know that I have help make a way by which my family’s legacy will be able to go forward to future generations.

There was one thing that I was unhappy with, with my results, and that was that I did not get a chance to get one of my brothers' view on these things. I had email him my request to the wrong address, and by the time I called him, he had actually gone out of the country on vacation (he really likes to travel a lot). Because of this, he wasn’t able to respond and give me his personal history, but I hope to soon redo my project and make sure that he is able to give his own personal view on what happened in our family, and his personal history.

I’m really glad I had an opportunity to participate in this project. As I said in the beginning, I thought that is was probably the greatest learning experience that I have had all year. The reason I say this is, first, this is something that I care about. Something that I wanted to be a part of and something that I found interesting and enjoyable. I have found that any subject will mean a lot more to you if you can apply to your life personally. The second is working hard to write this, I have learned great amounts about my family, and even myself. And last of all, I think it has given me a greater appreciation for history and the importance of people keeping journals, or at least keeping an accurate world view of how things are, and how they are changing. It has shown me that history is an invaluable tool that can help people learn from the past as to improve or not make the same mistake, and also that it causes us too look deep into our selves and others to come up with conclusions, and therefore take a good look and be willing to not only face a problem, but figure out where it has come from and how it can be over come.

All I can really say is that I think it is kind of interesting to realize that you get out of these kinds of things what you put into them. When I first started this project, I wanted to do as little as I possibly could, and I thought that this was stupid and I could never learn from it. Now that I have started to put some effort into what I am doing, I have realized that what happens in history, but that we have an affect on what happens. I also have started to gain a great appreciation for those who keep journals or keep records of any kind. If it were not for those people, there is nothing in this world that would be the same as how we recognize it today. This has probably been the most challenging project, and you the project that I learned the most from, and that I felt was the of the most use.