Grandma Has a Story to Tell... on YouTube

By Jessica E. Vascellaro, The Wall Street Journal

May 21, 2007

Paul Gordon, 92, talks about his piano 

When Paul Gordon wanted to show off the piano he built, he turned to one of the Web’s hottest performance venues: YouTube. But at 92 years old, Gordon was housebound and didn’t own a video camera. So he asked for help from an acquaintance who brought meals to his house. 

Now an eight-minute clip of Gordon playing jazz on the piano has been viewed on the video site more than a thousand times. “I figured I would like to leave something around after I am gone,” said Gordon, who now resides in a nursing home in Purdys, N.Y.

Online video-sharing sites are a magnet for technology-crazed teens, aspiring actors and people who like to show off their pets. Now they are starting to attract another demographic: those people’s grandparents.

As making home-grown online videos becomes ever easier, senior citizens – some of whom don’t even own computers – are seeking to preserve their legacy through videos showcasing the famous family chicken-soup recipe or stories detailing the provenance of cherished family heirlooms. The clips take on special meaning for relatives who are finding new meaning in old stories brought to life and the assurance they will stay in the family. Some are attracting interest beyond the family circle, generating tens of thousands of hits on sites like YouTube, owned by Google.

Bayla “Bubbe” Sher’s online cooking show “Feed Me Bubbe” has developed a following on video-sharing site Blip.tv and other video sites and has generated thousands of e-mails from fans, which Sher, who goes by “Bubbe,” or grandmother in Yiddish, responds to herself.

Sher and her 23-year-old grandson, Avrom Honig, hatched the idea for the show, which Honig estimates has been watched more than 200,000 times based on internal logs, as a way to preserve certain family recipes like Bubbe’s sweet and sour meatballs. They have made more than a dozen episodes to date, mapping out scenes and practicing each recipe beforehand.

“It is a great opportunity for us to spend some time together and to share recipes for the future,” said Sher, who is in her 80s.

For Honig, it offers a chance to showcase his grandmother’s tasty cooking and zestful personality: “I get to share the wonderful feelings Bubbe gives me … with the world.”

Seniors’ foray into online video comes as they are pursuing a range of other online activities as well. Seniors 65 and older are one of the fastest growing segments of the online population, according to Jupiter Research. Nearly 15 million seniors, or 39 percent of all seniors in the United States, will regularly access the Internet by the end of 2007, according to Jupiter Research. By 2010, 20 million seniors, or half of the U.S. senior population, are expected to be online. Using e-mail is the most popular online activity among seniors, followed by searching and conducting product research.

Internet companies are launching services targeted at older online viewers in response. Eons Inc. has launched a new social-networking site geared toward audiences 50 and older, offering features like LifeMaps, a tool for recording family memories like vacations and birthdays through photo slideshows and a longevity calculator.

Creating an online video is still a particularly high hurdle for many senior citizens, said Jakob Lodwick, the founder of online video sharing site Vimeo. Lodwick said he knows plenty of 20-year-olds who are intimidated by the process, which entails filming the clip, transferring it off the camera through a connector cord and uploading it to the site. So he was pleasantly surprised when his own grandfather wanted a piece of the action, requesting his grandson post a clip of him retelling his history of getting drafted and training for combat during World War II to the site for posterity.

“I didn’t really digest that story until I watched him tell it,” Lodwick said.

Some older Internet users are finding posting a digital memoir far less technologically imposing than they expected. Bev Sykes, 64, of Davis, Calif., recently started a video blog, which she films with a digital camera or videocamera and a tripod. Her topics follow what’s on her mind – from her husband’s retirement party to her shots of her new puppy exploring her house. Recently she’s featured her 87-year-old mother reminiscing about when movie tickets cost a dime.

“It’s no longer a special thing for people with special equipment,” Sykes said.

Others, still wary of the generation gap, are turning to children and grandchildren to help bridge it. Leo Perry of Pinellas Park, Fla., 79, uses his computer to write e-mails to family members and to look up information such as flight arrival times. But for the more complicated task of posting a video of one of his harmonica club’s concerts to the Web, Perry turned to his granddaughter Erinn, 27, who filmed his Gulfport Senior Citizens’ Harmonica Club playing “When the Saints Go Marching In” at a retirement community and posted it to YouTube.

“I was amazed she could do it,” said Perry, who shares the video with part-time troupe members who don’t live in Florida year-round.

While some are looking to trace back through decades of history or document big events, others are recording more mundane moments. To help preserve her memory, Millie Garfield, 81, of Swampscott, Mass., decided to feature herself in a series of videos documenting one of her 49-year-old son Steve’s pet peeves – namely, her persistent requests for his help opening coffee cans, rethreading dental floss or opening other tightly sealed bottles. Steve, a video producer in Boston, has helped her film and post the series, called “I Can’t Open This,” on a blog, mymomsblog.blogspot.com, and on YouTube. Millie’s friends – and random users who find the clips through searches – have posted comments like “Those pesky plastic containers, they are a pain.”

“We have fun with it and it captures our relationship,” said Garfield, who also has his own video blog. “I am very proud of her.”

•  To watch Paul Gordon play his piano, click here. 

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