Recording Your Life

Laurie Patton Glasson uses her television news-reporting skills to document life stories for you and your loved ones.

For 10 years, being a journalist made Laurie Patton Glasson feel alive. But last spring when yet another wave of May tornadoes came through town, Glasson watched her family (her husband and three dogs) head into the basement as she got dressed and drove into work. Realizing that she one day could be leaving her child behind during dangerous situations, Glasson knew she had to make some changes. “I decided to move on. It’s not easy, because it’s your passion in life,” Glasson says without a hint of regret. In September 2006 after 10 years in television news (eight of which were spent at KY3) Glasson left the broadcast world. She now works in fund raising for the Cox College of Nursing and Health Sciences and runs her own business, The Life Story Company, where she uses her television news reporting skills to document the lives of her clients in video.

Glasson always knew family was important. But when her dad died in 2003, her priorities about family were changed forever. Because Glasson’s father, Richard Patton, was 52 years old when she was born, she felt like there was a lot about her parents that she didn’t know. “My parents lived a whole life before I was even around,” she says. On a whim, she asked her dad to do a video interview. After years working in television, this was Glasson’s first truly personal story. Stacking encyclopedias in lieu of a tripod, Glasson interviewed her “Greatest Generation” father and recorded his first-person account of being a drill instructor in the Marine Corps during World War II and a college football player. He told her about running his own business and raising their large family. For a couple years after the interview, Glasson left the tape on her desk without a way to convert it for editing. During that time her father succumbed to dementia and then passed away. With proud tears, Glasson says she realized what she had captured with this video footage. “I have him the way he was before he was sick,” she says. “When I have kids, I’ll be able to say, ‘Here’s your grandpa.’”

From her father’s interview came the idea to start The Life Story Company, a business where she could record the stories of ordinary people. After buying the domain name (thelifestorycompany.com) nearly two years ago, Glasson purchased the equipment she’d need and consulted the S.C.O.R.E. (Senior Core Of Retired Executives) as business advisors. Now Glasson uses her camera and edit bay at home to make the stories happen just like she had as a reporter. Surprisingly, telling the stories of others is hardly different from reporting the news. “It’s almost like my own little TV station. KY-me,” she says with a grin.

Glasson says the packages on the website are just a starting block. Some customers ask for a more comical approach to the life story, an unexpected, but completely welcomed, surprise for Glasson. Basically, she meets with people who are interested, and they make a plan for whom to interview and which images to use. Then Glasson executes the project. Leaning on her TV news experience, the projects are anything but daunting. “It’s much less of a burden for me than it would be for someone else,” she says.

Glasson truly believes that everybody has a story. “Not everything is spectacular, but everyone has a passion for something, and that is just as important as interviewing the president or being the president,” she says.