Chester Marvin Cissel, 1911-1997

In the early 1990s, I developed an idea for a company that I wanted to start called Leaving a Legacy. The company would combine my passions for the following:

1. Learning from history
2. Celebrating lives lived
3. Helping people create stories of their lives that would live on after their death
4. Helping survivors of death have easily accessible content of their loved ones’ lives.

I have never stopped wanting to create this company, but never felt comfortable taking the time and money needed to do it away from my family. In retrospect, I am creating the first example of what I imagined for Leaving a Legacy by creating my website and putting on it some of my most treasured thoughts and memories.

Back in 1994, I wanted to begin this company by videorecording people who would one day no longer be with us so that we had a record of them. At that time, video recording was becoming accessible to everyone and I realized I could capture the lives of my grandparents before they were gone. I had become friends with the technology person in the library of the college where I worked (his name was Marty and I was working at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA).

Marty allowed me to check out a video camera and a tripod from the library and drive it to Maryland where I was able to record my grandfather in November 1994 – 30 years ago last month. The camera needed a tripod because it was so large you would have to steady it on your shoulder when filming.

I created a list of questions that I thought would elicit good stories and information from my grandfather and arranged for him to sit and allow me to record him. Although my grandmother had died 10 years earlier, in 1984, by 1994, Granddad had remarried a widow named Dolly Benton and she sat off-camera watching me interview him.

In retrospect, there are 100 things that could have been improved about this effort. My interviewing technique was horrible – I asked few follow-up questions and I failed to let him know I was hearing what he said (by offering up summaries and emotional acknowledgement of his reflections.) However, being the strong man that he was and wanting to please his grandson, he pushed through my faults to offer some quality glimpses of his life.

Ideally, I would now learn to edit this video for shorter sound bites and maybe even improve the quality of the image. But instead I am going to celebrate that 30 years after making this video, it is now entering the internet for the world to see a glimpse of Chester Cissel. I doubt more than 10 people will ever watch the interview in its entirety, but I don’t care. I wanted to remember my granddad for the rest of life, and I knew I could better do this by having a video of him. He inspired me in many ways. Things I loved about him included:

1. He loved to tell me and my sister funny stories in bed at night before we went to sleep in his house
2. He tried to keep with the Maryland Terps basketball and football teams because he knew I loved them and he attended there also.
3. He never wanted to stop working to make a positive difference – deciding to manage a farm in his country owned by a wealthy French family after his retirement.
4. He loved showing us around the farm he managed, including the pool, horses, cattle, etc.
5. He showed me how to make homemade ice-cream, homemade wine, and fix many other things around his house.
6. He let me drive his car when I was 16 and helped me become more comfortable driving.
7. He modeled being a good sibling, father, and husband to his family. I never saw him be stern or angry with anyone and he always sought to put other people at ease in his presence.
8. He asked me good questions about my life and showed interest in the things I was learning.
9. He was the first person I saw decline in health to death and he did it with dignity and humility.
10. He loved me unconditionally and was always willing to talk.

I hope someone else learns something from him, even if it is just his friendliness and kindness to humor me during the interview. I am excited to have it here instead of on a VCR cassette!