SOU English Alums Daniel and Julie Bring Stanley Luther’s Memoir to Life
By Nylah Winchester, senior English major
December 5, 2025
Pictured above: Daniel Alrick (left), Stanley Luther (middle), and Julie Kanta (right)
When SOU graduates Daniel Alrick ’14 and Julie Kanta ’14 began working together on Stanley Luther’s (Stan) memoir, they were already familiar with the responsibility of telling someone’s life story. Community members often reach out to the English department to inquire whether a student is available to help write their memoirs. When Dr. Edwin Battistella received such a query from Stan Luther, he immediately thought of Daniel and Julie. Dr. Battistella (now Professor Emeritus of English Studies) had been Daniel and Julie’s capstone instructor, so he was familiar with their background in life writing; this made them perfect candidates to collaborate on Stan’s memoir!
Julie’s capstone focused on her mother’s immigration from Denmark in 1960; she wanted to “create a book that sort of captured [her mother’s] narrative story as well as images from her scrapbooks and photos.” Daniel’s capstone was on disability advocacy, but shortly after graduating from SOU, he contributed to the memoir When Nothing Is Real for his friend Steve Weiner. These experiences set Daniel and Julie on paths that would eventually lead them to Stan Luther.
“Everyone who knows Stan has said the book feels like sitting next to him while he tells his story.”
– Daniel Alrick
Stan Luther is a World War II and Cold War veteran who served thirty years in the United States Air Force before teaching night classes at a community college and retiring in Southern Oregon. Over the decades, Stan pieced together memories of deployment, teaching, parenthood, and domesticity before writing them up “for the family.” Daniel explains that he and Stan spent many hours on their “hands and knees going through boxes and boxes of papers and photos.” Artifacts are a key component for memoirs as these materials contribute to the book’s authenticity and quality, so Daniel was happy to help Stan organize.
Pictured Above: Stan holding the Bronze Star he was awarded in Vietnam
For Daniel, storytelling is a form of public service, which makes accuracy and integrity central to his writing process. In working with Stan, Daniel tried to verify as much as he could through historical accounts and primary documents: “I was able to confirm that Stan’s secret deployment to a civilian airport in a bomber did occur, through research of since-declassified files.” Additionally, Daniel consulted with Stan’s two living sons and daughter-in-law. After talking with them, Daniel compared their accounts to Stan’s audio and visual tapes, as well as the recordings Stan’s late wife Nellie prepared before her trouble with Alzheimer’s disease.
Daniel notes that Stan was completely forthcoming in all the details of his life. He maintains that nothing was off-limits: “Stan is open about his family, his sexuality, his health, his thoughts on his own mortality. The illness and death of Nellie, his strained relationship with his own father. So it wasn’t difficult at all to record those details. It lent itself to the headlong momentum of the storytelling.” He admits that some days left him drained and hungry, “as though walking in another man’s shoes used up twice the calories.” But in those instances, Daniel and Stan would go downstairs and have dinner.
One of Daniel’s greatest challenges was balancing different perspectives—especially when earlier drafts risked portraying Nellie as simply the wife at home. Stan used the phrase “a perfect military spouse” when referring to Nellie. This phrase prompted Daniel to ask Stan, “what does that mean?” and “what was the cost of that?” Daniel explains that Julie’s insight as a veteran and mother also encouraged Stan to reflect more deeply on his wife’s role: “Stan understood context, and I was always telling him that my role is not to interrogate his life, but if our mission is to write a book for a general reader, what is a general reader liable to feel?”
Pictured Above: Nellie (left) and Stan (right)
While Daniel worked on Stan’s memories and artifacts, Julie ensured the manuscript held together editorially. She guided structure, refined language, protected authenticity, and managed the production process from start to finish: “I’ve developed my skills well enough to know when and how to break the rules. A lot of times it was just a matter of guiding Stan and offering my suggestions and expertise, but still allowing him the creative control over what is included or what’s edited.”
Julie’s goal with every client is to preserve their story the way they want it told. To achieve this goal with Stan, Julie “tapped” into his personality: “Stan is the type of person to learn from every experience. He’s very open-minded and generous. He has an authentic voice, and he’s got a great sense of humor. So I think for me it’s really about tapping into a particular author’s personality.” By doing this, Julie crafted Stan’s “personal brand because authenticity is key.”
Julie’s challenges were more technical but no less significant than Daniel’s. From learning how to streamline InDesign layouts to managing endless rounds of edits, she ensured the manuscript remained cohesive: “Learning how to utilize InDesign to where a small change wouldn’t affect the entire layout of the book was one thing,” she explains. Julie also navigated one of the most time-consuming parts of publishing: production. She notes that editing, designing, and publishing a book is very meticulous: “There are a lot of pieces to a book that people don’t necessarily realize. A book is a sort of living project. There isn’t just like a template for how long a book takes, you know. So it surprises many people when they realize how much time it takes to publish.”
Pictured Above: Julie Kanta in her office
As the project with Stan concluded, Daniel and Julie reflected on memoir writing. Daniel sees memoirs as a collective memory. He maintains that, “Stories are how human beings have learned through the years, so not only are you letting people see the stories of people in your community, but you are learning about the matters and issues you can be involved in.” Julie, on the other hand, emphasizes the urgency of preserving firsthand histories: “Personal artifacts are deteriorating. If they’re not preserved, it’ll be forgotten.” Even now, Daniel imagines how the memoir could have expanded into another medium had he discovered Stan’s abundance of tapes and 8 mm film earlier. He would have proposed making the project a movie as well as a book, as he believes visual storytelling could have enriched the narrative.
“Everybody has a unique story…writing memoir is powerful because it can be a way of examining and valuing your life.”
– Julie Kanta
Daniel and Julie’s roles complemented each other, and they shared the same goal: to honor Stan’s legacy with authenticity and craft. Their collaboration ensured that Stan’s stories would continue to live on for future generations.
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Interested in being featured on the English Program blog? Or know someone who is interested? Contact English Program blogger Nylah Winchester-Robinson at winchesterrobinsonn@sou.edu.
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