The Stories That Actually Matter (What We’re Doing at This Year’s Celtic Festival)

We’re sponsoring the Celtic Festival this year, and we’re doing something a little

different with our booth.

Instead of the usual setup, we’re creating a legacy interview station — a quiet

corner where people can sit down and tell a story. About their grandmother.

About a piece of jewelry that made it through a war. About the fishing cabin that

three generations have called theirs even though nobody technically owns it on

paper. About anything that connects who they are to where they came from.

I tell clients all the time that the legal work we do — the trusts, the powers of

attorney, the carefully mapped asset plan — is one form of love. It keeps people

out of court. It keeps families out of conflict. It lets someone die knowing they

gave the people they love a clear road map instead of a mess to sort through

while they’re grieving.

That matters enormously. But I’ve also sat across from enough families to know:

nobody is going to pull out your will to remember you by.

They’re going to tell stories. They’re going to show their kids an old photograph

and try to explain who that person was — not the assets they left behind, but who

they were. That’s the part that doesn’t fit in a legal document. And if we’re not

intentional about it, it disappears.

The Celtic tradition was built around this. Oral history, genealogy, the keeping of

lineage — knowing where you came from was how you knew who you were. A

lot of our clients come to us already feeling that pull. The women caring for aging

parents while raising their own kids, watching a parent’s memory slip and

realizing there’s a story they never got to ask about. The business owners who

want their kids to understand not just what they built, but the grit behind it. The

families who’ve navigated hard things and want that to survive them.

Legacy interviewing is our answer. It’s a guided conversation that helps people

surface the things worth saying — the values behind the decisions, the things

they want their grandkids to know. We offer it to every client as part of the

planning process, captured on video or in whatever form fits best. It sits

alongside the legal documents as a record of who left all of this, and why.

What surprises people most is how much comes up around objects. Not the

valuable ones, necessarily — a cast iron skillet, a set of mixing bowls, a watch that

stopped working thirty years ago but that someone still keeps in a drawer. These

things carry weight that has nothing to do with their dollar value. Legacy

interviewing maps the meaning behind them, so the people who receive these

objects have something to hold onto besides the thing itself.

That’s what we’re creating space for at the festival.

If you find our booth, sit down. There’s no pitch waiting. We’re there to listen,

and to help you say something worth keeping. And if a conversation about your

own plan follows — about what you want to protect, and how, and for whom —

we’re glad to have it. But the story comes first.

Come find us.

Saturday July 18th and Sunday July 19th at Fort Tuthill in Flagstaff

Learn More About the Festival