Will you be a part of history?
Wheeling Heritage is asking members of the community to share their experiences they’ve had during the COVID-19 pandemic. The organization is asking anyone interested in sharing their story to visit wheelingheritage.org/covid-19 and submit text, audio, video or images.
The organization is hoping to get a variety of submissions, including items like kids’ art projects, homemade masks, and videos and essays explaining how people are coping during this unprecedented time.
How have the past few weeks sheltering at home made you feel? Are you a health care worker, a grocery store clerk, a mail carrier? Do you still have a job, or have you joined the hundreds of thousands who have applied for unemployment? What’s it like to not be able to hug your grandchildren for weeks? What have you been doing to stay sane? Are you ready to ship your kids back to their teachers? Have you been baking, exercising, learning a new hobby, sleeping late, not sleeping at all? What will you remember from all of this?
“This is an important time in our collective history, and we want to make sure we get as many voices as possible when we document it,” said Betsy Sweeny, Wheeling Heritage director of heritage programming.
“I know it can feel silly to record a video of yourself or snap a screenshot of your Facebook status, but in 100 years, that’s exactly the kind of content that will help interpret this crazy time. This is your chance to shape how history is told, by explaining in your voice, what this experience has been like,” she added.
As a heritage organization, Wheeling Heritage works to preserve and share Wheeling’s cultural history. This includes telling important stories about Wheeling’s past, but also documenting and preserving today’s important stories as well.
“We are all experiencing this together, and we can’t say what you feel is most important to remember from this time. That is why Wheeling Heritage is asking you to share content you feel is important to remember. Help us by submitting typed personal reflections and stories, images, and sound and film recordings,” Wheeling Heritage explained on its COVID-19 web page. “Help us write history, so that the everyday experiences of our community are represented, not forgotten.”
Through Weelunk, an online magazine Wheeling Heritage acquired last year, the organization works to share various Wheeling-focused stories with a variety of community writers. The team has been working to share an array of content about the community’s response to COVID-19, which can be accessed at weelunk.com.
