Why this exists
Most of us have a photograph of someone we cannot name.
Somebody kept it. It was worth keeping through house moves, clear-outs, and years in a drawer, which means at some point it mattered to someone. But whoever knew why is gone, and all that remains is a face that belongs to a stranger.
We have never had more photographs and never been further from knowing the people in them.
What is missing is not another picture. It is the voice — someone saying who that is, and what was happening, and why they kept it.
A photograph tells you someone was there. A voice tells you who they were.
Where this came from
My sister had breast cancer. My brother was taken by ALS. My father fought Parkinson's.
I have photographs of my brother and my father. What I do not have is either of them talking. Not one recording. And of everything that was lost, that is the part I did not see coming.
Nobody thinks to record a voice. There is no occasion for it, no moment when it seems like the natural thing to do, and by the time you want it there is nothing to be done. You can look at a photograph for as long as you like. You cannot hear it.
My sister is still here. I have not recorded her yet.
I built this, and I still have not asked — which tells you something about how easy it is not to. It is never the right moment. There is always more time. That is exactly the mistake this is meant to prevent, and I am not above making it.
Kyle and Pat — Elmira Vintage Sailplane Meet, New York
What we make
We create keepsakes that carry something photographs can't — a person's voice.
A pendant, a card, something you can wear or carry. Tap it with a phone and you hear them. No app. Nothing complicated. Just their voice.
Recording takes about three minutes. We ask a question rather than presenting an empty page, because almost nobody knows what to say when asked to record something important, and almost everybody knows what to say when asked what they are proud of.
The recording doesn't depend on a subscription, and it doesn't depend on the object — you also receive a copy of the original to keep. Around it sits a place to add photographs, stories, and messages meant to be opened years from now, so that the picture in the drawer comes with the reason it was kept.
Who is behind it
I am a bench jeweler. I have been making things by hand for most of my life, and I am seventy-three, which is old enough to have noticed what goes missing and to still have time to do something about it.
I design and make most of the pieces myself, cast in my own workshop in Vernon, Connecticut. I encode every chip and check every card before it is posted, because a card that opens the wrong page is not a mistake anyone should have to forgive.
This is not a large company. That is deliberate. What is being kept here is not the sort of thing you hand to somebody who does not care about it.
“I can hear my Mom whenever I want.”
— said by the first person to be given one
The promise
The recording is yours. You get your own copy of the audio file, so it does not depend on us being here. As long as we are, it stays reachable — and if that ever changes, we will tell you and give you time, not switch off a page and hope nobody notices.
A voice should not be something a family loses twice.
Voice Legacy Vault · Give Your Life a Voice · Vernon, Connecticut