I thought writing down my grandpa's stories was a waste of time, then I found his 1962 letter
My grandpa used to tell the same stories over and over at Sunday dinners in Fresno, and I always tuned them out. After he passed, I found a letter he wrote to my grandma in 1962 while he was working away from home, and it mentioned things he never talked about, like losing his job and sleeping in his truck for 3 weeks. I started writing down every story I could still remember, and now I have 14 pages typed up on my laptop. Some of it is stuff my mom had to fill in because I got the details wrong. Does anyone else write down family stories, and how do you get the details right before the people who remember them are gone?
So you got 14 pages of stuff your mom had to correct, and you're asking how to get facts right when the only people who knew are already gone? Maybe the point was never getting the facts right at all, and turning Sunday dinner into a research project is exactly how you end up with a notebook nobody in the family actually wants to read.