ITAWAMBA COUNTY, Miss. (WTVA)-- The Young family of Itawamba County is the focus of the first episode of a new series on Mississippi Public Broadcasting.
It was created and produced by a member of the family.
Steve Young credits the loss of a family member as the cause to film the series.
A preview of the documentary was shown Tuesday at the Mississippi Hills in Tupelo.
"We lost my grandmother, who was the matriarch of the family and the mother of 8 children, one of which was my dad. We thought she would never die and she died unexpectedly and we realized what we had lost. All that family history, no one had written it down. And that helped motivate us to go out there and get our own family's history captured," Young.
MPB hopes "Our American Family" will take off and go national.
"We don't want to stop at this program. We want to make this an American phenomenon. We have a desire to do African-American families, Asian families, Latina families. All people who are part of this American melting pot because all families have a story to tell," said Ronnie Agnew, executive director of MPB.
"This has been picked up in several markets nationwide. We hope it will spur more families to apply and be considered," said Young.
The series hopes to document the basis of families and family culture in the 1900's and to also preserve those memories that would otherwise be lost.
"We're standing on the foundation of what was forged back then and that's what we have to capture while we can. What did it mean and how can it work today? And that's what we're trying do with Our American Family," continued Young.
The Young episode will air Thursday, October 18th at 9:00 p.m. and will re-air throughout the next couple of weeks
