Happy New Year!

We have big plans for 2013, which we’ll share with you very soon! For now, we are beginning to transcribe the interviews we conducted as part of our mission to capture oral histories of the Lebanese-American community. We started this project with the rich interview with Mr. Mitchell Mack. Mack graduated from Morrisville High School, then attended Davidson College where he graduated in 1942. He then went on to Harvard Business School. He also served in the Naval Air Force during that time. Here’s an excerpt from his interview where he discusses the importance of education in his household:

Well, we were a very close family. I don’t know why but of course being the youngest of the family I learned from everybody. I was ready when school started. I was ready to go to school. In fact, I wanted to go a year…my birthday was in January so I went when I was five. So, they sent me home. I had to be six. So anyway, I started off very precociously in the first grade when I started school.

To learn more about the Mack family, check out a short clip from the interview.

From the transcript, Mack went on to say:

Charles Mack was a regular connoisseur of sweets, and food, and candy. He had a candy kitchen. He made. I remember going in there. He had the best salted peanuts in the world. But he had coconut brittle, peanut brittle. He had coconut creams. He had a big marble granite top table in the back and an open top stove where they set the kettles down in and cooked the stuff. And they’d make that vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate coconut cream ribbon candy. They’d make the chocolate and pour it out on the table and it’d cool. They’d add the vanilla and pour that on top of it and then it would cool. And then, they’d make the strawberry and pour that on top of it. And they’d cut it and you’d have a tri-colored piece of candy.

You can also view their newest addition, created by the Mack family and generously donated to the Project. You can also check out the Mack Family Collection in our archive.