Podcast 5 Intro

May’s Topic: Mormon Motherhood

To listen to this podcast on-site, begin here.

To download this podcast via iTunes, click here.

Our May podcasts feature Round Table members interviewing their mothers about Mormon motherhood and commenting on their own experiences in turn. For this month’s challenge, we encourage you to take some time and interview your own mom. Ask these five questions and be sure to record the conversation for posterity. Do the same with your mother-in-law, sisters, and daughters and you will have a collection of family history that you will always cherish. If you are interested you can include these interviews in the Mormon Women’s Oral History Project directed by Dr. Gregory Prince. This project seeks to capture the voices of 20th and 21st Century Mormon women as they honestly tell their personal spiritual journeys through life–their frustrations, trials, triumphs, and joys. These interviews will be recorded and saved for scholarly research in the archives of the University of Utah. In order to add your voice and the voices of your family to this project just follow the interview instructions and consent form requirements below.

♦

Guest Bios:

Ariel Bybee (Neylan’s mom) was a prominent mezzo-soprano at the Metropolitan Opera for eighteen seasons, appearing over 450 times on the Met stage.  She followed her performance career as a professor at the University of Nebraska and the University of Utah. She is the mother of one daughter and grandmother of three granddaughters.

Linda Jacobson Eyre (Saren’s mom) is a New York Times best-selling author of parenting books and speaks internationally with her husband, Richard, about their books and ideas.  She is the mother of nine children and grandmother of 21 grandchildren.  She loves art, nature, travel, and reading and has a voracious appetite for learning.

Lois Patterson (Lisa’s mom) is the mother of 8, the grandmother of 26, and the great-grandmother of 7.  She worked her way through college while keeping her kids fed, clean, and hilarious.  All eight children remember an idyllic childhood full of home-canned peaches, camping trips, and hand-made Christmas.  They have been known to beg for the secrets of her astounding awesomeness (they suspect it has something to do with a radioactive spider)!  She then spent many years teaching second grade, and retired to take several missions with her husband, working in the Family History Libraries in Salt Lake City and New York City where she helped to open the Ellis Island Immigration History Center.

Carol Kostakos Petranek (Kathryn’s mom) is the first member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in her family and the only member in her extended family. Born and raised Greek Orthodox, Carol was introduced to the Church by her second husband, Gary Petranek. Together, they raised a blended family of four children, and today they are the grandparents of fifteen. Carol is one of the directors of the Washington DC Family History Center and a volunteer at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

Heidi Brinkerhoff Shields (Chelsea’s mom) is the mother of eight children and one grandchild. Having all of her family under one roof is the thing that brings her the most joy. She is a financial guru who has been able to raise all of her children, provide extracurricular activities, and help them all through college on a CES salary. Throughout her life she has also worked in her own pre-school and daycare centers, sewing, in church auxiliaries, and as a substitute teacher in Lodi, CA. She is currently enjoying grandmotherhood and hoping that her brood will exponentially increase.

Barbara Bitner Warburton (Emily’s mom) is the mother of six children and grandmother to seven. She teaches literature to 6th graders and enjoys reading, visiting, lounging at Bear Lake, but above all, spending time with and serving her family. She has served in all auxiliaries of the church and currently is in charge of a stake trek for the youth with her husband Larry Warburton.