Second slideshow picture: Pictured at his home, Oregon rancher Jim West is among those who have agreed to take part in Kenmore artist Charlene Freeman’s Life Stories Project. A professional photographer, Freeman likes to shoot her subjects with a photo of themselves at a younger age, much like the one West holds here.

The roots of Kenmore artist/photographer Charlene Collins Freeman’s longtime, ongoing project probably are located in her own roots.

Until she left for college to study photography at age 17, Freeman lived in her native Italy.

“I really think there’s a different cultural view of elderly people,” Freeman said. “Here, they are really, often, an overlooked part of our culture… It occurred to me that when they die, their stories die with them.”

Freeman points to her own personal experience as proof. She looked on the deaths of her own grandparents not only as losses of family members, but as lost opportunities to learn and share their stories. Freeman decided to change that by sitting down in 2005 with her fraternal grandfather, Dennis Collins, who at the time was 90.

“My grandfather loved to tell stories and despite living in the U.S. for over 50 years, he never lost his English accent,” Freeman writes on her Life Stories Web site.

The Life Stories Project is Freeman’s answer to the question of what happens to the stories we all have once we are gone. Her grandfather and a few friends represented her first interviews. With her background in photography, photos became a natural part of the interview process, most subjects holding a picture of themselves at a younger age.

Freeman emphasized she is not looking necessarily to talk to celebrities or other people famous for whatever reason. She is more interested in everyday people — people who, she has found, have some stories that don’t seem everyday.

For example, one of her first interviews was a lady named Susie Boyd, who was 94 at the time. A widow, she still lived on her own in the home she had once shared with her husband. She and Freeman had known each for 10 years, but Freeman never had known Boyd was one of the first female pilots in the state of Oregon. She and her late husband piloted a small commuter plane around Oregon and Washington for many years. As a matter of fact, Freeman said Boyd kept flying into her 70s.

Freeman’s most recent interview was with Woodinville’s Cricket Crockett. And, yes, that’s her real name. She is a niece, five generations removed, of famed frontiersman Davy Crockett.

Other examples from Freeman’s Web site: About halfway down the list of her interviews is photographer Leo Stockham, who ironically, didn’t have a picture of his younger self. Instead, Stockham posed for Freeman with a shot he took while studying photography with the famed Ansel Adams. Freeman pointed to part of Stockham’s story as easily one of the most surprising things she has come across so far.

Years ago, Stockham apparently decided he needed a change and told his first wife he was going out for a pack of cigarettes.

“He never looked back,” Freeman said. “He was just so matter of fact about it.”

While he suffered from memory problems, to the best of his recollection, Stockham said he and his wife never contacted each other again.

Another memorable story involved Ralph Currin, 89 at the time Freeman interviewed him. A lawyer and a judge, he also was a prisoner of war during World War II. Freeman said while you might have expected to hear about mistreatment and poor conditions, Currin said the biggest enemy of the prisoners in his camp was boredom. To combat that problem, he and other better-educated prisoners put together a sort of prison university for other soldiers.

“I just found stuff like that amazing,” Freeman said.

While she has gathered some seemingly worthwhile stories and photos, Freeman only has been able to arrange a dozen or so interviews. She’s a bit frustrated with that, but holds high hopes that her project will grow. Also a watercolor artist, Freeman said she now runs her own photography business, which means she is her own boss and can devote whatever time she needs to devote to the Life Stories project. She regularly visits local retirement homes and senior-citizen social gatherings hoping to find folks willing to speak with her. Freeman also hopes a little publicity will add to her roster of interviewees.

So when and where does the project end? Freeman said hopefully in an art gallery, coffee table book or both. One interview/photo subject that will have to wait for a while is the one Freeman hopes will top off the Life Stories Project. Now 46, Freeman wants to put in the collection a picture of herself at least a few decades from now, probably complete with her own story. In the meantime, she’s going to keep hoping for more and more subjects.

“It’s fun and it’s interesting,” Freeman said. “You get to see them come back to life as they go through what they have to say.”

Freeman plans on adding podcasts of her interviews to her Web site shortly. For more information, or to volunteer to be interviewed, visit Freeman’s Web site at www.lifestoriesproject.com.