Jesse FloydFamily mythology is the idea that every person has a story to tell, that you don’t need to be a king or a kingmaker to be interesting.
“You don’t have to be Oprah Winfrey to have an interesting story,” said Belmont resident Jim Cosco, owner and proprietor of Legacy Video Stories. “We all have interesting stories, whether it’s something small or big, it doesn’t matter. It’s all interesting.”
Legacy Video Stories, which has studio space in Belmont, is a new company that aims to capture those small moments, those personal stories, that make up a life.
“Legacy Video Stories helps seniors record videos of themselves in order to preserve their memories and their stories for future generations,” Cosco said. “It preserves their family histories, and it preserves their life story: where they came from, what they do, how they spent their life, what they love to do.”
Cosco has earned a living in the video production industry for two decades. His primary business is Tipping Point Labs, a video marketing company. Tipping Point has worked with industry heavy hitters such as Putnam Investments, John Hancock, and Wellington Management.
Legacy, which launched in February, is an idea born out of loss and a missed opportunity. The loss was the passing of Cosco’s father, who died about a year ago at age 83.
The missed opportunity? He had often talked to his dad about setting up the Tipping Point equipment and recording his father’s life story. He was, Cosco said, a salesman by trade, a storyteller by instinct; he had an interest in genealogy and was a repository for all the family stories.
But as so often happens, life got in the way. A growing business, a hectic life, and time just kept rolling on. Before Cosco knew it, the chance to interview his father was gone.
“I had 10 years to do it, and I never did. When he died, I was like, ‘That was a stupid mistake,’” he said.
The final thunderbolt of the idea came a few weeks later, watching a recording of his father from a Zoom call during the pandemic. Every sibling repeated how nice it was to see Cosco’s dad, healthy, happy, and thriving.
“That’s when it hit me. I was like, ‘It’s not just me,’” he said. “I think that other people would love this concept and want to do this for their parents, too.”
In Cosco’s opinion, it’s easy to lose those family stories because when children are young, the parents are busy and as their children get older, they become busy themselves. It becomes easy to decide there will always be enough time, Cosco said.
You might pick up a nugget or two at family dinners, or on the holidays, but a real, focused interview will reveal much finer detail.
“You have to really make a point of asking them and make it your mission to find these things out. So I figured it would be a good thing to do for other people. And so I started this business,” Cosco said.
Cosco is passionate about this idea. He pitches it to just about anyone who will listen, and he’s given talks at local councils on aging, he’s talked to funeral homes. He’ll be at the Belmont Council on Aging in the fall.
“The biggest obstacle I found is people like the idea, but they put it off,” he said. “Just like me, they’re putting it off.”
The end result is a professionally produced video. Cosco starts the interviews with simple questions, building into more complicated – and revealing — questions later in the interview.
“Some people think of a legacy as ‘This house I’m passing down to my kids’ or ‘This property in my business [I’m passing down]’,” Cosco said. “‘That’s my legacy, and it’s money.’ But to me, a legacy is stories. It’s what makes up a family, what makes up a person.”