Jane on her first memorial video for her Dad, Walter Lehmann

From the YourStoryHere archives, originally published on January 19th, 2009.

The first memorial video I ever made was about my Dad. He had grown up poor in South Australia, the descendant of immigrants who had fled chaos in mid-19th century Germany. They escaped war and poverty in Silesia for peace and poverty in Australia!

 He became a navigator in the Pacific war against the Japanese and was later stationed in Japan for the Allied Occupation. He was an amateur boxer and rugby player. In civilian life, he built his own house and worked with early computers. He loved my mother more than anything. I wanted my children to know their grandfather.

My twin boys were only one when he passed away from liver cancer at 74. So we couldn't interview him. Instead, we filmed me talking about the history of our family and about Dad. We interspersed photographs of Dad as a boy (not many of them!) that we panned across and showed in close-up. (We had to fix them up a bit first in Photoshop.) It was like a very sophisticated photo montage.

I had quite a few good air force photos and several documents. We added captions showing the time, place and who the people were - I had to ask Mom for help on that. (Don't men and women in the service always have nice photos? I guess the risk of dying prompts them to take the trouble!)

Below is a snippet of Wally's Memorial Video, with music removed for copyright purposes. The full video can be found on the YourStoryHere Vimeo, by request.

We added music. We made a DVD with chapters and a menu. We put it in a DVD box with a special cover we designed showing Dad with the handle-bar mustache he had in the Air Force and we put all the major facts in his life on the back. The whole thing was like an A&E biography!

My three boys watched it with great interest and asked lots of questions. My Mom cried when she watched it. She showed it to the other grandchildren. We made copies for all the family. We even shared it with relatives living in other cities so they could see it.

Reflections

Re-watching this video in 2025, I am struck by two realities of the importance of documenting our family history. First, what a joy it is to discover and learn about Wally thanks to all of the work put in by Jane and Peter. And second, now that Jane has also passed away, how incredible it is to see a younger Jane talking about her Dad.

Conclusion? It is never too early to document your loved one's personal history. Explore the offerings at YourStoryHere if that is something that interests you. And lastly, if fate decided to take one of your friends or family members before you were able to record their story, then reach out to Memorial Videos to create a curated celebration of life video.