Lily Koppel’s “The Red Leather Diary”

If you follow me on any of the social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, then you know a couple of weeks ago I spent the week in Valley Forge Pennsylvania at the Association of Personal Historians annual conference. It was an amazing five days (plus I tacked on another two to do some urban touring around Philadelphia), and I met some remarkable people and learned a lot. My last blog post was a general recap of the week there and some of the highlights but I would have to say that I was profoundly affected by one of the keynote presentations there that has lead me down a huge rabbit hole of thought and exploration into the concept of an “ordinary life”.

The presentation was by Lily Koppel, a writer and author of “The Red Leather Diary.” In 2003, Lily found the diary in a dumpster when the manager of her NYC apartment building cleared out one of the storage rooms. The diary was started by 14 year old Florence and written in every day for five years. It chronicles her coming of age in a time (late 1920s to early 1930s) when young women were schooled in the artistic life and allowed to pursue art, dance, writing and theater as a vocation. Ms. Koppel became entranced by the book and finally located the diarist, now in her 90s. Together, they explored the diary and this one girl’s life and the book was born, weaving the story of the diary, the story of Florence, and Lily Koppel’s own story of how finding the diary changed her own life.

What’s had me so engrossed is something that Lily said in her keynote presentation. She talked about how the young girl in the diary was so unfamiliar to Florence when she was finally reunited with the diary again. How reading about her own exploits as a young woman ‘breathed new life’ into her “old woman” and got her excited again. The secondary title is “Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal” and I think that concisely addresses the reaction of both Florence, the diarist, as well as Ms. Koppel upon finding the diary and my own fascination with this story as a discussion for the concept of an ordinary life.

Read my complete blog post here...