Tagged: StoryCorps

Van Harris and his wife, Shirley, grew up in the same Brooklyn neighborhood. They lived about a block away from each other. At StoryCorps, they talked of how they first met — 75 years ago.

Van, 87, recalls the day that he first noticed Shirley, 85.

"I met her when she was about 10 years old, and she was beating up a couple of guys," he says. "The boys had taken her hat off her head, and they were tossing it around."

Shirley kept asking the boys to give her hat back, but they wouldn't do it.

It's been 20 years since the Los Angeles riots shook that city — and the nation. On April 29, 1992, several white Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in the beating of black motorist Rodney King during a traffic stop.

News of the acquittals sparked unrest across the city. The fires, looting and violence lasted for several days and devastated neighborhoods — many in the city's African-American communities.

This spring, Les and Scott GrantSmith will mark their 25th wedding anniversary. The couple raised two daughters along the way. But 15 years ago, they hit a crisis that nearly shattered their family. Les was keeping a secret, and that became a problem. But they solved it as a family, in a way that kept them together and happy.

In the weeks leading up to that day back in 1997, Les was certain of two things: She was a mother who loved her daughters — and she was also transgender, the term for someone born in a body of the wrong sex.

When Grant Coursey was a toddler, he was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a cancer often found in young children. A tumor had wrapped itself around Grant's spinal cord and had grown so that it pushed against his lungs.

Now 12, Grant is cancer-free; he received his first "clean" scan 10 years ago in March 2002. He had to undergo several procedures to rid his body of the cancer.

Recently, Grant and his mother, Jennifer, sat down to talk about his young life and how cancer has affected it.