Lisa Gioia-Acres

I have always been drawn to hearing the stories of others.

I didn’t set out to become an anthropologist or a historian.

But I believe my early life experience, that of losing my mother and father when I was an infant, somehow put me on this path. When I learned in my early teens how they died, shocked at the details of the tragedy, I began a quest to find out more in the hopes of understanding how this could be my story. I began doing investigative research about my parents; their lives and the circumstances surrounding their deaths. It was like opening Pandora’s Box; I became obsessed with digging up history and writing about it. It helped me to understand many things: the choices I made throughout my life’s journey, how tragedy at any age can affect lives, how the actions of those long dead reverberate on those left behind, and how empowering the search for the past can be for those willing to look behind them to inform their present and future.