Question pack

Questions to Ask Your Grandfather About His Life

Questions that get a grandfather talking about growing up, work and service, important relationships, and a world that has changed.

A grandfather has usually told the same four stories so many times that the family stops asking. But those four stories are the polished ones, the rehearsed set. Underneath them is a whole life nobody has asked about in decades: the price of things, the names of workmates, what a Saturday was for.

The questions below are designed to get past the greatest hits. They ask about ordinary days, because those details can be easy to lose over time.

Use only the questions that fit. Skip anything that feels too private, and follow the details they want to share.

Growing up

  1. What was in your pockets when you were ten years old?
  2. How far away was school, and how did you get there in bad weather?
  3. What did your family raise, grow, or make at home?
  4. Who was the oldest person you knew as a child, and what did they talk about?
  5. How did you earn your first money, and what did you do with it?
  6. What was the best meal that came out of your kitchen growing up?

Work, service, and skill

  1. What was your trade or line of work, and who taught it to you?
  2. If you served, what do you remember most about the people you were with?
  3. What did a good day's work look like, start to finish?
  4. What's the best tool you ever owned, and where is it now?
  5. What did you build or fix that's still standing?
  6. What did you earn in a week back then, and what did rent cost?

Relationships and home life

Use these questions only if they fit his story.

  1. How did you meet your partner, and what do you remember about the beginning?
  2. If you chose to marry or make a commitment, what do you remember about that decision?
  3. If you had a wedding or celebration, what do you remember about the day?
  4. What was the first home that felt like your own?
  5. How did you manage money in the years you were starting out?
  6. If you cared for children, what did a Saturday with them look like?

His world, then and now

  1. What did your town have then — the shops, the mill, the depot, the church?
  2. What's something every household had then that nobody has now?
  3. What could a dollar buy when you were a young man?
  4. What invention arrived in your lifetime and changed daily life the most?
  5. What do people worry about now that never crossed anyone's mind then?
  6. What's one thing that's still done exactly the way it used to be?

How to use these questions

Let him hold something while he talks: a tool, a medal, an old photograph, the watch. Objects are the best interviewers in the world, and a grandfather explaining what a thing is for will tell you the story around it without being asked. If you don't know what he's kept, "what's in that drawer?" is a fine opening question.

When one of the rehearsed stories starts, don't wave it off. Ask for the part that isn't in it: who else was there? What happened the next morning? And record him, even just on a phone face-down on the table. His exact words, in his voice, are the thing your kids will want.