Some of those lives are hastily scribbled on scraps of paper. Others fill leather-bound journals with lazy longhand. Still others come tidily typewritten. They are among the thousands of diaries, letters, autobiographies and punctilious notes that line the shelves of the
National Diary Archive Foundation, providing firsthand accounts of the lives of common people and how they witnessed the grand events that shaped the nation.
Remembering, and celebrating, the lives of ordinary people who set down their experiences on paper is at the heart of what inspired Saverio Tutino, a foreign correspondent and devoted chronicler, to start the archive in 1984, that seemingly distant age before millions everywhere posted their every deed and opinion on Twitter.