A Confluence of HIstory and Inspiration with Julie McDonald Zander

Julie's website

This episode features a discussion with Julie McDonald Zander, an inspiring woman who turned her journalism career into a personal history business.

Fascinated with history, Julie's passion led her to the creation of Chapters of Life, where she has published more than 75 books and beautifully captured various individual and local histories.

An interesting highlight was Julie's work with Rosie the Riveters, preserving their powerful stories.

Julie McDonald Zander, an avid fan of history, earned a bachelor's degree in communications and political science from the University of Washington.

After working two decades as a newspaper reporter and editor, she launched a personal history business to capture and preserve life stories.

Her company, Chapters of Life, has published more than seventy-five books.

She and her husband live in the Pacific Northwest, where they raised two children.

Her nonfiction book about Matilda Koontz Jackson, Washington Territory's Grand Lady: The Story of Matilda (Glover) Koontz Jackson, was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Spur Award and the Will Rogers Medallion. 

It can be found at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Walmart, and other retailers.

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Find me on my website: jan-johnson.com

Transcript

[00:01] Jan: Are you looking for an inspiring listen? Something to motivate you? You've come to the right place. Welcome to Women of the Northwest, where we have conversations with ordinary women leading extraordinary lives.

[00:12] Motivating, inspiring, compelling.

[00:18] Hello, friends, and welcome. Today's interview is with Julie McDonald Zander.

[00:24] She is an avid fan of history, earned a bachelor's degree in communications and political sciences from the University of Washing, Washington. After working two decades as a newspaper reporter and editor, she launched a personal history business to capture and preserve life stories.

[00:41] Her company, Chapters of Life, has published more than 75 books. She and her husband live in the Pacific Northwest where they raise two children.

[00:50] She has a non fiction book about Matilda Coontz Jackson called Washington Territory's grand the Story of Matilda. It was a finalist for the Western Writers of American Spur Award and the Will Rogers Medallion.

[01:04] Anyway, let's just dig right in and hear her story. Welcome everybody to Women of the Northwest. My guest today is Julie McDonald. Zander, thank you so much for being here today.

[01:17] Julie McDonald Zander: Well, thank you for having me.

[01:19] Jan: We got to chat together the other day at writing table in an event and so sharing a table together and getting to know each other and looking at your books and all that kind of fun stuff, you got some interesting stories going on there.

[01:34] Julie McDonald Zander: Well, it was fun hearing your stories too, about your memoir and your romance writing.

[01:41] Jan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're, you're a journalist, you write a little bit. Tell me about that.

[01:48] Julie McDonald Zander: Yep. I started. I graduated in communications and political science from University of Washington and started working in newspapers and I worked for a weekly and then I worked for a couple dailies.

[02:01] I became a, after 10 years as a reporter, I moved up to the city desk and became an assistant city editor.

[02:09] Did that for about 10 years and then I quit to launch my personal history business. So I could, I used to edit the obituaries for the newspaper.

[02:19] And as I would edit them, I'd think, oh, this person has a great story.

[02:24] But they are gone and they took their stories with them. So I decided to catch people before they die and capture those stories, at least for their family and friends.

[02:34] Jan: Isn't that interesting how, I don't know, life leads you into one thing or another. You kind of go, oh, there's an idea, you know.

[02:41] Julie McDonald Zander: Yeah. I had done that work for my own, you know, my mom and my dad, just because I wanted to, you know, get that link with my grandparents that I never knew and things like that.

[02:51] So I had done it with my family and then my mom encouraged me to do it as A business. I thought, nobody's going to want to do this. But, you know, I started Chapters of life in 1999, and I've been doing it ever since.

[03:04] Jan: So how does that work? Tell us about that.

[03:06] Julie McDonald Zander: I will, you know, when I meet clients, I will show them my books now, but I interview people in their own homes, and we do it for a life story book.

[03:16] It's usually 10 to 12 hours of interview over a period of time, usually about two hours each time. And then I will transcribe those interviews and edit them into a narrative, and then I give that to the, you know, client to review.

[03:32] And meanwhile, I'll scan their photos and memorabilia to put into a book, and then we compile it all together into a book and publish it. So usually it's small runs for family and friends, and that can be hardbound.

[03:47] It can be paperback. You know, it's. I've worked with a small printer up in Centralia Forum Printing, and they've been terrific. And their minimum print run is 25 copies, but most of my clients do between 50 and 200 copies.

[04:06] Jan: Yeah, yeah. Oh, that sounds really interesting. That'd be fun.

[04:11] Well, I think I told you, too, that I've had a couple of interviews with 100-year-old women, you know, that just. Just to be able to preserve their story for their families and friends, you know, and hear their voice again, too.

[04:23] Julie McDonald Zander: Yep, yep. I've done a lot of them. As in 2007, I started writing a column for the Chronicle up in Centralia, and I do a lot of history because I'm very interested in history, but I've done a lot of seniors and elderly people because they're living history.

[04:41] You know, they have seen so many changes in their lives, and I just love to capture that for family and friends and also for the readers of the chronicles. So it's.

[04:52] It's pretty. It's. It's always. I always learn something from everybody I interview.

[04:57] Jan: Yeah. Yeah. That's really cool. How many of those life stories have you done?

[05:03] Julie McDonald Zander: Have you published? Altogether? I've done over 75 books. But some of those are. Most of those are individual life stories. Some of those were bigger projects like company histories. I did a history of Century College.

[05:19] I've done a history of Bukota, and that was two books that. That became a project that turned into two books. And I did a history of our Lewis County Courthouse, which was a historic courthouse.

[05:32] I've done church histories, school histories.

[05:36] So it depend on industrial park history. So it kind of depends on what the Client wants, you know, some of the bigger ones. I will interview more people, you know, up to 20 people, 30 people, and gather their interviews into or their stories and compile it into a narrative.

[05:55] So it's always fun and it feels good to know that that history has been captured. I mean, one of the hazards of my job is interviewing people in their 80s and 90s is that a lot of them are, they're gone.

[06:09] But it's really nice to know they left their stories behind.

[06:13] Jan: The legacy, isn't it?

[06:15] Julie McDonald Zander: Yeah, it is. It is a legacy. We interviewed, I did the.

[06:19] In our community, we honored the Rosie the riveters back in 2005. Yeah, we had like 80 people respond in this. We started with a little booklet that ended up with a big book, but we have a chapter there on where were you when Pearl harbor happened?

[06:35] And then there was a chap, a local family that was interned, a Japanese American family that was interned. So there's a chapter on the Japanese internment. And then Boeing started a lot of branch plants throughout the Northwest here.

[06:48] They had Chehalis. They established a branch plant in chehalis to build B17 wings, wings for the B17 bombers. And so a lot of the women in our community worked there at the Boeing plant.

[07:05] And then of course, like the Kaiser shipyards, then a lot of these people who had worked in, in the defense industries shared their stories with us. And one of our.

[07:16] Rosie's, the only one locally who I know of that's in the book that is still alive. She was 16 when she started working at the Mount Rainier Ordinance Depot. And she had long red fingernails.

[07:29] And one of the, one of the guys she worked with, he knew her dad and he told her to go home and play with dolls.

[07:37] That's, that's what he told her. But she ended up, she was 16 and she had, she ended up being really fast and efficient with the, you know, putting together jeep axles.

[07:47] She won the efficiency award from the, the, you know, they gave the general, bestowed a one on her. And then. Yeah, so she came back and this guy thought she had gotten fired.

[07:59] And he told her that, oh, I thought they fired you. And she had a rose. They gave her a rose. And she put it in her mouth and said, no, no, she got honored instead.

[08:09] So she's a wonderful, wonderful lady. And I had a book signing just this. Let's see. Yeah. November 9th in Chehalis at the Lewis County Museum. And Doris was there and signed the Life on the Home Front book because there's a chapter in there about that, go home and play with dolls, you know, so she's one of our last rows of the rivers.

[08:32] But the nice thing is all of those 80 people, part of their stories is preserved in that book, Life on the Home Front. And I. It's just reassuring, I guess.

[08:43] They've left a part of themselves behind, a part of their, their role in history has been chronicled for future generations. So. And the same with The World War II veterans I've interviewed and put into a book, too.

[08:56] Jan: So how did you contact these Riveters, your Rosies? How do you contact them and get hold of them?

[09:04] Julie McDonald Zander: Well, I have a friend who, she was a county commissioner for two terms, but she knows everybody in the community. She's one of those people. And when I was on the committee with her, the list, she would find out about people's names.

[09:17] And the list started smaller and it grew. And I put together a little booklet with photos and stuff, and I asked people questions in there. And we sent.

[09:28] I think we sent out about 50 of those initially. We ended up with about 80 Rosie the Riveters, you know, in the book, mentioned in the book. But I was surprised at the response rate.

[09:42] People were really eager to share their stories, you know. Yeah. And I guess. And one lady, when I handed her the copy of the book, she said, well, should have done it a long time ago, I'm thinking.

[09:52] Yeah, probably. But we did it now, so that.

[09:58] Jan: Had to have been fascinating. Just, just fun stories and. Yeah, yeah.

[10:04] Julie McDonald Zander: And they were amazing. They were our grand marshals for the parade in 2005, the Rosie the Riveters, and we call them Rosie and the Guys because there were some guys on the home front, too, who, you know, weren't.

[10:16] They didn't either didn't go to the military for some reason, or they couldn't get in, or they were on farms and stuff. And they also worked in the defense industries.

[10:24] So Rosie and the guys, they were our grand marshals that year.

[10:29] Jan: Wow. That. That's cool. When you write your historical books, are they. They mostly Northwest things or are they located other places?

[10:40] Julie McDonald Zander: Yeah, they're. They've mostly been Northwest history, historical things. And I've done a lot of historical column columns for the newspaper that are about local history.

[10:52] And, you know, for some reason I just, you know, history has kind of fascinated me. And like the. My debut novel that just came out, I had seen a little plaque at the, at the museum, just a little tiny plaque, and it said that this woman had suffered tragedy on the Oregon Trail.

[11:11] And I went, wow, what would you do? You know, you're so far away from your family. So I spent five years digging into that in my spare time between personal history projects.

[11:22] And I went to the Washington State Library and dug into a couple boxes they had of the family papers and things like that. And I wrote the nonfiction book of what did this Woman Do?

[11:34] You know, and then, but you know, nonfiction has a different audience than fiction, and so fiction reaches more people.

[11:42] And then I, I was, I had debated about whether or not to write it as fiction or nonfiction, and I took it to a critique group and they said, well, you need dialogue.

[11:54] And I thought, wait, this woman died in 1901. If I put words in her mouth, it's no longer nonfiction. So I actually published it as nonfiction. Washington Territories, Grand Lady.

[12:05] And that was because her story had never been told. I mean, a lot of the history in the Northwest and everywhere I think is about the men.

[12:14] And so I do believe behind every good man there's a woman. And you know, he could not have done all the things he did if she hadn't been home there running the hotel, cooking all the meals for the guests that came, taking care of everything.

[12:29] So, and her story, to me, it was just fascinating. So, so I published that as a nonfiction, but then I had joined writers critique groups, two writers critique groups, and to learn how to write fiction.

[12:43] And I had never written fiction, but it intrigued me. And I actually go 200 miles round trip once a month down to Sherwood, Oregon for a writer's critique group because Melanie Dobson had an opening in her group.

[12:58] And I said, oh, sign me up, sign me up. So I've been doing that and I have learned so much and from Melanie and Nicole and Don Shipman was in there, she was there Saturday, and Tracy Hes.

[13:10] And it's been a wonderful group and I have learned so much. And they're so nice about the way they tell me the same thing as a secular group. Told me the secular group would.

[13:20] Wasn't so nice about it, but they would say the same thing. So instead they will say, well, this kind of, instead of saying this stinks, they'll say, you don't really need to put in there in the story about everything they packed into the wagons.

[13:34] So, you know, get the reporter out of there. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[13:40] Jan: Yeah. That is tricky. You know, there's a lot of little, little things about it, but wow, what a beautiful thing to do with, with some well known people. And, and really their, their advice has got to be wonderful.

[13:55] Julie McDonald Zander: Oh, it is. I Go to that one once a month. And then I have one in Centralia I go to once a week. And that's another. It's another Christian writers critique group, but Debbie Lee writes romance, and I'm terrible with romance.

[14:07] So I was like, debbie, help me. And I have Kyle Pratt in there. He writes sci fi fantasy, a post apocalyptic thing. So Joyce Scott, we have a great. I think we have like six or eight now in there.

[14:19] And it's been Barbara Tiff Blakey writes some historical fiction, and then Heather Alexander has a book. It's almost like. It's like the Mitford series in a lot of ways. I keep saying it's like the Mitford series just because it's one of those with the characters are so cool.

[14:37] You just really want to keep reading. So. I love my critique groups. I have learned so much from all of them. The members in the.

[14:45] Jan: I joined Encore through the college and they have a writing group, critique group there. It's on zoom all the time. And there's eight or 10 of us that show up. Some of them are poets and others are once writing a kind of a futuristic type of book.

[15:04] And another historical. She has her family came on the wagon train and doing her. Her stories there or whatever. But they are so, their, their critiques are so great. I mean, real specific kind of things.

[15:18] Well, even down to a word or down to something. And I haven't had that before, so I really, really appreciate it.

[15:25] Julie McDonald Zander: Yep, I do that too. I just, I just love that, you know, I went to one years ago and it was. Everybody just said, oh, this is nice. Well, that wasn't worth my time.

[15:34] Yeah, Well, I was like, I, I read at my critique group up there, okay, guys, let me have it. Let me have it. How can I make this better? Yeah.

[15:41] And it, and it's been so wonderful. So I, I really credit the last five years for the, you know, for my knob. The. The nurturing that I've gotten from both critique groups to help me learn how to.

[15:53] Right. Fiction, point of view. All these things I never knew as a. As a nonfiction. Right.

[15:58] Jan: No head hopping.

[15:59] Julie McDonald Zander: No head hopping. Point of view, you know, and the deep point of view. And, you know, it's great. Everybody brings something different to all the critiques.

[16:12] Yep, yep. Yeah, it's been wonderful. And then also a lot of. Quite a few of my critique group members were beta readers for my novel because they see it every week.

[16:22] A little bit. A little bit. And then they read the whole thing and they gave me terrific ways to improve it. And I owe a lot to them. I credited them all in my.

[16:32] The back of the book because.

[16:33] Jan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it made such a difference. Yeah. That's amazing. What's. What's one of your favorite books that you've written?

[16:43] Julie McDonald Zander: That I've written? Well, of course, my debut novel now. And I. In my column, I've written about. Everybody knows who's read my columns, that she's my favorite pioneer. We have a lot of.

[16:54] Jan: Tell us the name again. Tell us the name of it.

[16:56] Julie McDonald Zander: Matilda. The debut novel is called the Reluctant Pioneer.

[17:01] And it's about Matilda CO Jackson. And she ended up.

[17:07] When she did make it out here, she was living in what became the first courthouse in Washington territory, and it's still standing because her granddaughter helped spearhead a women's group to preserve that.

[17:20] So it was falling down. And the women's group, the Saint Helens Club, raised money to preserve that historic courthouse, which is now part of the state Parks Department. And then her daughter actually donated five acres to the state parks and put a.

[17:39] Created a. They created a state park in Matilda Jackson's name. So it's Matilda Jackson State Park. It's the second. I think it was like the second park in the. In the state of Washington.

[17:50] So anyway, Matilda, you know, Matilda, she entertained Ulysses Grant and General Sheridan and. And I think. Who else? Anyway, she's Washington Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens. When I did went through all these journals, you know, there were people that left comments about it.

[18:11] And she was also very.

[18:14] I wasn't sure when I dug into this, whether she was a Christian or had any faith at all, but I don't know how you could have survived what she did without faith, But.

[18:23] But anyway, I did find a little note in the. In the Historical museum that said that in 1853, they shipped a bunch of stuff to the Jacksons around Cape Horn or.

[18:37] Yeah. And among those were a hymnal and a Bible and all these things. I thought. Yeah. And then later on, as I dug into it more, a lot of the newspaper articles that quoted her grandchildren said that, you know, well, Grandma was sad today, you know, but they described how she always had.

[18:54] How she always had her Bible on her lap.

[18:58] I mean, so she's like. I've always kind of looked at her as. More as one of the sweet, gentle, kind people, you know, and she was a great housekeeper and she was a great cook and all the things that I'm not.

[19:10] I guess that may be why I admire her so much.

[19:13] Jan: She's a hero.

[19:15] Julie McDonald Zander: Yeah. Yeah, she is.

[19:17] Jan: I don't know, can anybody be great at all those things?

[19:20] Julie McDonald Zander: I know. I had. I. Yeah, I said that I have to give her a flaw when I was in my critique group. Yeah, I don't think. I think she was pretty amazing myself.

[19:29] Jan: Still gotta have a pain point in there.

[19:31] Julie McDonald Zander: Yep. You. You can't be a perfect, you know, so.

[19:35] Jan: And is that the one you got.

[19:36] Julie McDonald Zander: The award of that, the non fiction? I was a finalist for Western Writers of America and the Will Rogers Medallions. So, yeah. So. And then that's why then five years later, now I've come out with the fictional account.

[19:50] And it was so fun to write the fictional version. The, you know, the other one was good, but you have to stick to the facts in the. In the non fiction.

[20:00] So.

[20:01] Yeah, just the facts. And with the fix with the fictional version, I was able to get into kind of into her head along the Oregon Trail, and when things happened and when she, you know, shot down Celilo Falls, I could get in that canoe with her and go, oh, my gosh.

[20:18] So it was fun to. I think it's more fun to read it. And it was also more fun to write it.

[20:23] Jan: Yeah. And was it. Did you have a little bit of imposter syndrome when you were writing the dialogue to begin with on the.

[20:32] Julie McDonald Zander: The fiction?

[20:34] No, you know, I would have, except for I had already told her story.

[20:39] And that's. I am so glad that her story, the nonfiction story, is told because it freed me up to do that. Otherwise I would have, because I didn't feel right putting words in her mouth.

[20:50] But having told her story in the nonfiction book, it gave me some freedom to go ahead and tell the story as a, you know, as a novel and stuff, because if anybody really wants a real story, they can go look at the other book.

[21:03] Jan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I. That was one of the things that was hard when I wrote my memoir was trying to figure out because you, you know, the essence of what happened, but the actual conversations, I mean, you know, 30 years ago, it's kind of like, you know, so could I make that up or could I.

[21:20] Yeah, I could make it up. Finally. I had to be okay with just doing it that way, because otherwise, who wants to read a memoir that's dry and.

[21:29] Julie McDonald Zander: Well, that's. Right. And I mean, dialogue comes.

[21:33] Jan: Dialogue gives it life.

[21:34] Julie McDonald Zander: Right. But then with the memoir, you were.

[21:36] Jan: There, so I was there, but I still had to make up conversations because.

[21:41] Julie McDonald Zander: Right. But you can kind of remember the essence of what happened, if not the exact words. So when I help people write their Their memoirs. And I tell them, they'll tell me, oh, he said this or that, and, you know, that's the best of the recollection.

[21:55] Who else is going to be there around to dispute it, you know? So you do the best you can to piece it together.

[22:02] Jan: Yeah.

[22:03] Julie McDonald Zander: I really love the idea that you, with your memoir that you had your son involved in. In doing that audiobook. I mean, you gave me shivers when you let me listen to that.

[22:14] I mean, that's pretty amazing. You've been through. You've been like Matilda. You've been through some things. You really have. So.

[22:21] Jan: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

[22:23] Julie McDonald Zander: You can all learn from. From people who survive tragedies.

[22:26] Jan: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's. That's the reason why you do those things. You know, it's not just about. About, oh, I had this horrible life and this is what happened, but it's.

[22:36] It's about what happened because it. And through. And how it remakes you. And, you know, the things you have.

[22:43] Julie McDonald Zander: Your faith, a lot of times, your faith, you go through those things and your faith will carry you through that. And you don't see that till afterwards.

[22:49] Jan: Yeah.

[22:50] Julie McDonald Zander: That God carried you through a lot of those things, you know.

[22:53] Jan: Yeah.

[22:54] Julie McDonald Zander: And you don't even notice that. But when you're. After you've gone through it, you can look back and reflect and go, boy, I. My questioning this or that really deepened my faith.

[23:04] Jan: Yeah.

[23:04] Julie McDonald Zander: You know, I went through infertility and read all these books about, you know, when God doesn't make sense and disappointment with God and things like that, because, I mean, I was jealous of the dairy cows across the street.

[23:16] I'd say, God, you let them get pregnant. Why won't you let me get pregnant? We had a lot of these conversations.

[23:22] Jan: You know, that's one of those things when you get to heaven, it's like, that does not make sense. Why does somebody, you know, or why does somebody who wants miscarriages or just.

[23:32] I don't know, there's so many. The whole fertility thing or.

[23:36] Julie McDonald Zander: Yeah, yeah. How that works is, you know. Yeah. You know, you got. There are people that really would long to have children, and then there are people aborting children because they don't want them.

[23:45] And. And it's just. I'm trying to figure out God, but that's way beyond my.

[23:50] My job description. Yeah.

[23:53] Jan: Yeah. It's just there's some things that are mysteries, you know, and it just. But they're painful, you know, There's a lot of pain in there. And that's another have you ever written about that?

[24:02] Julie McDonald Zander: I've written columns about it, you know, and it's funny, you know, you write your column and you throw it out there into the world and, you know, wonder sometimes if anybody even reads it.

[24:11] But once in a while you'll get some feedback. And on the. When I wrote about the infertility, you know, my struggle with infertility, I received an email from a woman who said, you don't know how much I needed that today.

[24:23] And to me, that was. That was. That made the whole writing your column worthwhile, you know, because If God touched 1% through what I wrote, that's the whole point. Yeah.

[24:35] You know, it doesn't. Every week. Some weeks it's like, every week you have to do something. It's like it's not going to hit. Hit it every week. But. And I've made people mad with some of them, too.

[24:44] Don't get into politics, boy.

[24:49] Jan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a danger in that.

[24:52] Julie McDonald Zander: Yeah, yeah. It's a little dangerous. But one of the other columnists had told me, you know, to kind of avoid politics and religion, and I should have taken his advice on the politics.

[25:03] But I said, God is part of my life. If I'm writing about my life, I'm not going to be able to avoid him.

[25:11] One of the biggest compliments I had was from a woman. I had worked with her husband when I worked at the Chronicle back in the 80s. But anyway, I saw her at a 90th birthday party for a woman, and she came up to me and she grabbed both my hands and she said, I just want to thank you for putting God back in the newspaper.

[25:32] Jan: Oh, yeah.

[25:33] Julie McDonald Zander: And I thought, you know what I mean, I wasn't preaching or anything, but he's part of my life, you know, so I'm going to write about it, you know, and that was, to me, an awesome compliment.

[25:45] That was just like, wow. You know, it was pretty neat. She was. She ended up being 102 when she passed away. She was pretty amazing. I went and interviewed her when she had her 100th birthday.

[25:58] She got on the treadmill. She got on a rowing machine. I mean, she was just.

[26:03] She was just amazing. She was from Sweden. I tried to write those, the narrative and retain the narrator's voice so that people, you know, it sounds like the person's voice when they.

[26:15] When people read the story at a funeral. For one of the guys whose book, a man whose book I wrote, this man, this guy got up, he was former mayor, and he said, this just sounds Like Ed.

[26:28] And I thought, you know what? That's what I. I don't want it to sound like me. I want it to sound like Ed. And when he said that, I just thought, that's mission accomplished, you know.

[26:39] Jan: Yeah. Interesting. What. Tell us about a couple others. We've only got a few minutes left here, but tell them. Tell us a couple of other gist of your books.

[26:49] Julie McDonald Zander: I've done a lot of. I've interviewed a lot of World War II veterans.

[26:53] Most of those are gone now too, you know, and those were fascinating stories. I actually want to help the Veterans Memorial Museum up in Chehalis. If you've ever gone along I5 north towards Seattle, it's at exit 77.

[27:09] And when I first heard how that museum got started, it just gave me. It was like your memoir. It gave me shivers because this man, you know, was interviewing veterans for a church thing or something, and somebody, one of the World War II veterans came up to him and said, had tears in his eyes and said, I thought everybody had forgotten, you know.

[27:35] And so then at like, at 3 in the morning, he. He felt like God. God woke him up and spoke to him and don't. And said, don't let them be forgotten.

[27:44] And so he waited until his wife woke up and he said, what am I supposed to do with that? You know. So then he went out and this was back in the 90s, he went out and bought a video camera and he started recording.

[27:55] You know, he was a carpenter, but he started recording people's stories. And they would give him all these memorabilia and uniforms and things. And eventually he and his wife talk about stepping out in faith.

[28:08] They mortgaged their house to build a museum to store all that stuff. And this is why, when I heard that story, I was just amazed. And we had. We published a book.

[28:20] I helped to publish this book called the Miracle Museum because, you know, they remodeled this space and then they. All the people love, you know, veterans just swore into this and they had enough money to actually build a nice museum, which is at exit 77.

[28:37] And I went upstairs and it was one of those things where I really wanted to tell his story. And then it was funny because I was going to rent the upstairs for a meeting.

[28:46] And then he was talking, we were emailing back and forth, and he said, would you like to tell the story? I thought that was a God thing. So I couldn't afford, you know, to pay a transcriptionist.

[28:56] So I'm upstairs typing away as he's telling me one story after another. And I'm Getting tears in my eyes from all the healing that. That veterans experienced at that when they came in and saw things, you know, so one story after another, and I'm sitting here trying to type and wipe my.

[29:12] At the same time. But that was one of. That was just a volunteer project that felt God, God, God was involved in that. And, you know, I just. It's called the Miracle Museum.

[29:26] And to me, it's pretty amazing story. And he. He and his wife were pretty amazing to start that museum, which is still thriving. He moved to North Dakota stuff. But talk about a legacy.

[29:37] And on the side of the building, if you go to the museum, it says, they shall not be forgotten.

[29:43] Jan: Yeah, yeah.

[29:45] Julie McDonald Zander: And it doesn't glorify war. It glorifies. It honors the service of the men and women who, who, you know, were involved in that. And they have a wall of honor where little tiles can be purchased for family members.

[29:58] And I have my husband's. He was in Vietnam. I have my dad's who was in Korea. I have three uncles and a great uncle that are all on the wall of honor there.

[30:10] Jan: That is really special.

[30:12] I'll put a link in the show, notes for how people can get hold of you and especially if they're interested in having something done like that and just be able to find your books.

[30:22] Julie McDonald Zander: All right.

[30:23] Jan: That will be awesome. And thank you for joining me today.

[30:28] Julie McDonald Zander: Well, thank you for having me. It was so fun.

[30:34] Jan: That's all for today.

[30:36] Did you know it's easy to share an episode with your friends when the podcast is open? Look for three dots, click on them and you'll see various options. You can download the episode, play it next or last, go to the show, save the episode, or copy the link.

[30:53] Isn't technology amazing?

[30:56] Hey, I'm looking forward to you joining me next time. I hope you have a great week.