I am Dee Dee Parker, and my whole life has prepared me to be your Memory Keeping Specialist. But what does that really mean? Let me start at the beginning…
I have owned a camera since my youngest days, and I can still remember when I got my very first Polaroid camera. I used to dress up my sister and find photo props in the yard –a wagon wheel, chickens or ceramic statues from Mom’s flower bed– to make the picture look like I was a professional (so I thought!).
My parents took plenty of pictures, but they languished in bins, shoeboxes, drawers, Ziploc bags or simply the envelope from the photo processor where we sent our film to be developed. My grandfather loved photography, journaling and videoing the family events, and I know that’s where my love for pictures and stories originated.
After I married and had kids of my own, I wanted them to have more. I wanted to preserve “our story” for my kids and grandkids to enjoy, so I joined Creative Memories in 1999 as a consultant and began completing family albums and helping others do the same. I never liked to call it “scrapbooking” because it wasn’t a craft to me. It wasn’t something I needed or even wanted to be beautiful or creative and crafty. Of course I wanted my books to look nice, but it was more important to me for my books to showcase the pictures of my precious children and the stories of our life instead of the cutest sticker, latest design theme or some pop-up embellishment.
I was a consultant until 2010 when Creative Memories closed, but followed Rhonda Anderson (co-founder of Creative Memories) to Our Memories for Life and continued to make my own albums and support my customers. When my niece was born in 2012, I began to watch her full-time with her 3 1/2 year-old twin brothers. My oldest daughter was about to graduate from high school, and my youngest daughter was just beginning. My life was full of love, fun, children and making memories! I continued to serve my customers and complete projects, but didn’t have time to invest in building my business.
I was introduced to Forever in 2015, and my passion for helping others was reignited. I immediately became a Forever Ambassador and began sharing the concept of permanent online storage with everyone I could –I found myself wanting to save the world’s photos! But my family life refocused again when my husband and I accepted custody of four children in 2015, caring for them for a little over a year. When my youngest daughter graduated high school and the children in our custody returned to their natural family, I was ready to put all my energy and enthusiasm into my own business —Lasting Legacies was born!
Looking back, Polaroid had the right idea all those years ago with “instant” images. But today’s consumer often never moves beyond the point-and-click to get those precious pictures off their storage card or phone where they can find and enjoy them later. So, whether you want to capture the whole story or just highlight a period in time, a Memory Keeping Specialist will help illustrate your legacy for future generations to enjoy.
Everyone has different ways to keep, organize, display and share their own story, and I know that my lifelong experience with memory-keeping product management can simplify the process. Let Lasting Legacies come to your rescue to locate, organize, convert, store and preserve your family’s precious memories. I can manage the entire process to collect and curate your story in an album, slide show, recorded video and more, or help you identify the best products to do it yourself.