How did a corn breeder become transformed into a memory keeper?
To start with my father was a corn breeder (in Illinois) and I wanted to be just like him. My aptitude with math and science didn’t hurt either. So I went to school at CSU (Colorado State University) studying Agronomy (soil and plant science). I then went to graduate school at KSU (Kansas State University) where I studied wheat breeding. I then took over my father’s business and became a corn breeder of my own back in Illinois. I did that for about 7 years and then my corn field was hit by (as I claim) the 7 plagues (too much rain, too little rain, too much wind, weird destructive bugs that could have eaten it all over night, and blight). Ok, so it isn’t 7 plagues but there wasn’t much left of my field at the end of the season. There were changes in our industry at the same time. I asked Dad and he agreed that it was time to do something else. This freed up our family to move away from the Illinois humidity and back to Colorado and family. Now being in Colorado I had to find a new business. I tried out doing a multi-level marketing business, Creative Memories, but it didn’t go anywhere for me. This was my first step into the memory business. While I was with them I was on the steering team for new services they were going to offer for digital photos. They sent me an article from the Wall Street Journal about where the future of photos was headed. This was the pivotal moment for the idea of Leave A Legacy.
I decided to give up on someone else’s big dream of the past and venture on a new path….. People needed a place where they could take their digital photos and get creative with them….they needed a place where they could Leave A Legacy.
From my single idea came many more related ideas. Scanning of photos, slides and negatives so that you can put them in a digital photo book. Once we scan them then we can also restore the photos, make it into a DVD slideshow or even put images on various photo gifts. Along with photos we could take in other old media like 8 mm and 16 mm films, video tapes of all sizes, shapes and lengths, old audio like records, 8 track, cassettes and more. From there we create DVDs but the ideas continued to come. We got more equipment to allow the editing of their films, videos and audio in the studio or online.
So that’s how we got here. Marsha read an article and then her ideas expanded to where we are. We now have 2 locations, Fort Collins and Denver but we get projects of all types from all over the country and even from out of the country. We are passionate about preserving your memories and helping you tell the story of your life and your ancestor’s lives.