In Spring 2016, students from Professor Jill Lamberton’s Audio Rhetoric and Creative Writing course reached out to members of the Crawfordsville community. They wanted to get to know these citizens of the College’s hometown, to listen, and to learn. They wanted to record stories of those who live in the county, yet are not directly tied to Wabash College, and to share those stories with the wider world.
This Web site—Humans of Montgomery County—gathers and presents edited versions of those stories. Inspired by the Humans of New York online site, it is an ongoing project that seeks to build students’ listening and audio production skills and increase understanding and meaningful connections between the Wabash and Crawfordsville communities.
Students worked in pairs: While one person interviewed, the other took photographs. Our interviewees were remarkably generous and welcoming, meeting our students in homes, on campus, in other places in town that mattered to them. The students, staff, and faculty involved in the project extend our deepest gratitude to these members of our community for their willingness to tell their stories, and for granting us permission to share them with the world.
The Montgomery County residents our students interviewed included:
Dan Booher (Charles Ridgway ’16)
Stefanie Deaton (James Fritz ’16)
Megan Dillon (Dylan Seikel ’16)
Lee Douma (Holton Warriner ’17)
Keri and Carolyn Francis (Jake Thompson ’16)
Eric Frye (Weston Gregg ’16)
Naomi Harper (Willie Strong ’16)
Helen Hudson (Josh Tapper ’16)
Victoria Hudson-Swisher (Josh Covert ’18)
Paul Hutson (Brent Poling ’16)
Claude Johnson (interviewed by Austin Harrison ’18)
Marilyn Kelley (Connor Stumm ’17)
Corey Lane (Logan Taylor ’18)
Kelli Livengood (Connor Rice ’17)
Mike Norman (Austin Myers ’16)
Matt Williams (Ryan Anzalone ’16)
Funding for this project was provided by a Lilly Endowment Faculty and Staff Mini-grant through the Center for Innovation, Business and Entrepreneurship at Wabash College. Associate Director of Communications Richard Paige, Wabash Magazine Editor Steve Charles, and Audio and Video Technician Phillip Merriett provided interviewing instruction or technical support. Violet Mayberry and Heather Thrush facilitated connections with community members.
