The true story of your life is the one you put into words.
Family is everything. I live near where I grew up in New Jersey with my wife Jess and our children Asher and Sadie, and our lives revolve around watching them thrive and grow. We know firsthand the value of their knowing who and where they come from. We have also experienced loss — and with it, the particular grief of realizing how much disappears when a life goes unwritten.
What we pass down to the next generation is more than what's in a will. The values behind a life — the sacrifices made, the perseverance proven, the hard-won wisdom — only transfer if someone writes them down. Without the story, the context disappears. And without the context, what's inherited is legacy without meaning.
That understanding — of what family is, how shared experiences bind us across generations, and what gets lost when the stories behind those experiences are never told — is at the heart of everything I do.
The Moment Everything Changed
LifeStory began on Thanksgiving of 2014 when my grandfather — Major Benjamin Squires, 13th U.S. Air Force — looked at me across the table and said, "Richard, I need your help. Will you write the story of my life?"
I said yes before he finished asking. We spent hours together, my grandfather and I, and I shaped his words into a narrative that preserved his voice, his humor, his history, and his heart. The memoir went to print while he was in the hospital recovering from a stroke. When I told him it was finished — that everyone would soon have their own copy — his eyes radiated a quiet, deep comfort. He passed away shortly after, at the age of ninety-two.
I have thought about that moment ever since. About how close we came to losing his abundance of experience, perspective, and wisdom. About how "too late" doesn't announce itself — it simply arrives. And about how lucky we were that it didn't arrive before we captured his story.
That memoir is his legacy. Reading his words still fills me with a pride I didn't expect — the pride of having preserved something irreplaceable. What I discovered in those hours with Grandpa was the greatest gift a family can receive. It set me on the path I've been walking ever since.
The true story of your life is the one you put into words.
Family is everything. I live near where I grew up in New Jersey with my wife Jess and our children Asher and Sadie, and our lives revolve around watching them thrive and grow. We know firsthand the value of their knowing who and where they come from. We have also experienced loss — and with it, the particular grief of realizing how much disappears when a life goes unwritten.
What we pass down to the next generation is more than what's in a will. The values behind a life — the sacrifices made, the perseverance proven, the hard-won wisdom — only transfer if someone writes them down. Without the story, the context disappears. And without the context, what's inherited is legacy without meaning.
That understanding — of what family is, how shared experiences bind us across generations, and what gets lost when the stories behind those experiences are never told — is at the heart of everything I do.
A Note on Timing
If there is one thing my grandfather taught me — in his life and in his final days — it is that the right time to begin is sooner than you think.
"Too late" doesn't give you warning. It simply arrives. The stories that haven't been captured yet are not lost yet — but they are waiting. Every day that passes is a day the details grow a little hazier, the voices a little quieter.
If you are thinking about this — for yourself, for a parent, for a client, for someone you love — please don't wait for the perfect moment. There is no perfect moment. There is only now, and the stories still waiting to be rescued from oblivion.
I would be honored to help you tell them.
Richard@lifestorymemoir.com
