Jewel Anderson Czuchta, a retired nurse, has lived her life embracing new adventures and foreign places. She traveled to or lived in 20 countries. As a highly skilled, award-winning registered nurse, she was among the first to care for AIDS patients when it was a mysterious new disease in the early 1980s.
Her life story, friends and family told her, should be in a book for her family. Now it is. “Jewel: An Adventurous Life” chronicles her life story from her birth in New Jersey to her life today in Palm Coast, Florida.
“Everyone loved it. They knew all the places I lived, but not my reactions to them,” says Czuchta, who will soon turn 90. She loved reminiscing about her childhood and telling stories from her life.
Her book was written by professional biographers at Legacies & Memories, a St. Augustine company that has been writing life stories since 1999 — and helping writers get their story into books. The firm, which has worked with seniors throughout the United States, including those in New Jersey, California, Illinois, Texas, New York and Florida, also offers free information to anyone writing their story.
“Everyone has a story,” says E.L. (Ed) Wilks, president of Legacies & Memories, LLC. “I think more and more baby boomers and seniors see the value of writing their story — or having it written, not in a book for sale, but for their family. Stories keep family members connected for generations. Many of our clients say they wish their parents or grandparents had written their life story.”
Czuchta’s daughter had been encouraging her mother to write her story.
During the pandemic, Czuchta thought seriously about it.
“I was reevaluating my life and what I wanted to do with the remaining years,” she says.
She started writing her story, but decided she needed help from experts who write life stories. They interviewed her, gathered her stories, wrote her biography and produced books for her family.
Founded in 1999, Legacies & Memories, LLC is an award-winning boutique biography firm writing and preserving stories for families, for businesses, or to publish. The company also writes business books and provides traditional publishing and co-publishing for select writers working in most genres. To learn more, go to www.LegaciesandMemories.com and www.BizSuccessBooks.com. Call 904-293-9893.
