Brady will keep offering this course, she says. It's a meaningful but difficult class. "The last couple of weeks of the semester are brutal," Brady said. That's the point at which students have to transcribe hours and hours of conversations.

Brady's interviewing class has led to a second class, because the students want to read each others' interviews and talk about them. So now, during spring semester, some of Brady's students will meet at her home and, over pizza or Chinese food, they'll talk about the patterns they see in the life stories.

So far, said Brady, they've come to understand the power of the Depression, the effect that had on the lives of everyone who lived through it. They've interviewed a man who was a hobo, who actually rode the rails. They've interviewed women who loved to dance. "A lot of people have talked about the things they used to do for fun," Brady said. Fun without spending money.

Brady got the idea for expanding "West Side Stories" into the "YourStory" project when she went to New York City and saw the Story Corp. booth in Grand Central Station. She knew she wanted a studio in the new Museum of Utah Art & History. Rather than copying the ultramodern design of the New York booth, Brady built her studio to look like a living room.

"YourStory" officially opens Jan. 22. Meanwhile, people are already coming in.

All of this is good, but not enough for Brady. She wants all Utahns to tell their stories. That's why she wants to send out a storymobile. That's why she is looking, even now, for funding for a YourStory booth at the Huntsman Cancer Center. This desire to reach all Utahns is also why Brady is thankful that so many of her students speak more than one language.

When Sparks interviewed Rossetto, she learned that the older woman had come to the United States 30 years ago. Rossetto had nine brothers and sisters, and while some of them also converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she was the only one who emigrated. In the United States, Rossetto worked as a domestic, caring for children and cleaning houses. She never mastered English and never married or had children, so she never had any family to translate for her.

But for one semester, she had Sparks. And Sparks had her.

Knowing Rossetto confirmed for Sparks that she should go to graduate school. Today, halfway through her first year in the Graduate School of Social Work, Sparks works for a hospice agency. Because of Rossetto, Sparks sees her hospice patients differently. She is determined that every one of them will record their stories, she says. Knowing Rossetto "made me appreciate the people I work with a lot more. Their life stories affect who they are now."