Lisa B. Lee, professional genealogist, speaker, researcher, ancestral storyteller…. Born in Ann Arbor, MI in the 1950s, raised in Highland Park, MI. Genealogy is my passion. I spend nearly all my spare time thinking about, researching, and even dreaming about where and how to find our ancestors. It’s as though our ancestors are reaching out to me, helping me find them … using me. This is what I was born to do and I am grateful that I have been blessed with this gift. It’s not enough to just find the name or vital information (birth, marriage, death) of someone – rather I try to reconstruct their lives, year by year. I want to try to understand how they lived, to tell their stories, and to pass along this legacy to future generations of Lees, Randolphs, Jacksons, Douglasses, etc. Oral history is a major part of any genealogical project, but the problem with oral histories is that they are subjective – they change depending upon who is telling the stories. In researching my genealogy, I’d have been lost without the oral histories of my maternal grandmother, Mabel Lee Ragland Johnson, and my father, C. Bruce Lee. I firmly believe that genealogists are chosen by the ancestors in that they find a willing, open soul foolish enough to devote all of his or her free time, energy, and money to search for the remnants of lives long gone –– in appreciation of all that they left behind. I thank dad and Grandma for having been the “StoryTellers” for their generations. Without these stories, incomplete and incorrect as they may be, I could never have found as many ancestors and relatives as I have. In nearly every case, among the inconsistencies, contradictions, and exaggerations that are common to all families were precious kernels of fact (sometimes assigned to the wrong person, place, or time period), and invaluable leads,. Though I’ve devoted years researching the lives of those who came before me, I always wish I’d had more time –– time to tell the stories more completely. Many of the stories I’ve found are incredibly fascinating, heart wrenching, and even painful, yet they are, to the best of my ability, the truth, the whole truth, neither sugar coated nor sanitized. If only I had more time ... there are so many stories that beg to be told, but after years of research, eventually it’s necessary to pull them all together and finally put these stories to print –– so their lives, their dreams, and all they accomplished will be known by those who come after them. Finally, my eternal thanks to the ancestors for their guidance, love, and incredible patience with me. When I think about all that they had to endure, so that I could be here today to tell their stories … I’m humbled at the very thought. For thousands of generations, they survived incredibly difficult challenges while others around them did not. Had any one of them failed, none of us would be here today to read about them. Somehow, some way, all the cosmic tumblers of the universe fell into place and we were given the incredible opportunity and honor to continue their legacy. I pray that I have done them justice.