Four years ago, Christmas changed Pat O’ Neal’s life.
Her granddaughter, Jessica Duerr, gave O’Neal a gift that would bring her fans from around the world. Jessica decided her grandmother needed a new project, so she created a YouTube channel called Chit Chat with Granny Pat.
Jessica remembers, “I’d heard her say a few times over the course of a couple years after writing her books, that she just loves telling stories, and she really wished that she could do it on a wider audience and just tell them to a whole bunch of people. So, I just woke up one Christmas morning with this crazy idea, and thought, I'll just sit down at my computer for a few minutes and get this started. And I thought, what would be a clever name? Chit Chat with Granny Pat just came to me, and so I made her YouTube channel and gave it to her after all the gifts were opened that Christmas. And to say she was happy is probably an understatement. There were tears. She was really happy.”
O’Neal of Lexington, who turned 90 on May 1, recalls she was not sure what to make of the gift. “You're crazy? That's what I said. I know nothing about YouTube. I can't do that. That was about it.”
And O’Neal was less impressed with the name of her YouTube channel, and made sure Jessica and O’Neal’s daughter, Jan Deer, knew it.
“First thing I said to Jan and Jessica, her daughter, was Chit Chat with Granny Pat. That's the silliest thing I've ever heard of. They liked it. The people will like it. I said, I can't believe that that's going to be the title of my YouTube channel, but it has a ring to it.”
O’Neal has always enjoyed telling stories about family history, but this YouTube channel took her storytelling to another level. O’Neal’s first challenge was figuring out the technical side of recording her first story for Chit Chat with Granny Pat.
“It didn't record, and I had to do it a second time. It was a kitchen. Why in the world did I choose the kitchen. I'm not a cook, but everybody cooks on YouTube. So, I decided to do a recipe, and I thought I was doing pretty good getting everything put together, and sat down to watch myself, and nothing was there. So, I had to start over.”
O’Neal did not think this latest project would last very long. “I thought within three or four months, I would be so tired of trying to understand what monetize meant and all those new words in my vocabulary that I didn't have a clue what they meant. I can't do that. But I stayed with it. I am just doing my thing and thinking, oh, this is terrible. I would watch it. After I did a video, I'd watch it, and then I'd start to post it, and I got it recorded, and then I watched it. I said, no, no, I can't show this. This is terrible. Nobody's going to watch it, but I left it, just let it go. So many times, I have been told this is your best story yet, and I think I was going to delete that story, so it tells you what people like.”
Her stories often involve show-and-tell inside her small Lexington condo. In one segment, she shows off her vast collection of serving china. In another, she opens the radio cabinet from the 1940’s and explains how she bought it for twelve dollars at a garage sale. Many of her stories, she says, came from her mother.
“My mother told me the stories. So, they're not just my stories; they're her stories going way back. She could tell me about the Civil War; she could tell me about the ancestors in the Revolutionary War. She knew all about the First World War, and I had a brother who died in the Second World War, so I was learning a little bit of history on my own and also telling it to other people.”
Her stories on Chit Chat with Granny Pat are usually 30 to 60 minutes long. She does not edit them, which adds to her charm and authentic nature. If she has a sniffle or a cough, it stays on her recording. To date, Chit Chat with Granny Pat has nearly 39,000 subscribers. A fact that amazes O’Neal.
She records one or two stories every week. After four years, O’Neal has more than six hundred stories on her YouTube channel.
Her viewers include people around the world. “I learned that people do want to listen to me. People want to hear my stories. I was thinking, I'm getting elderly, you know. And I was thinking about the elderly people like me who live alone. What have they got to do besides watch TV? They don't have anybody to talk to. I've got to talk to them, I'm going to tell them stories, true stories.”
O’Neal’s success on YouTube has impressed her family.
Her daughter Jan says, “I feel blessed. I feel very blessed to have a mother that’s in excellent health. She's in better health than I am in literally. The people that she has reached literally all over the world, literally. And I'm like, the other day, there was somebody that was from Australia. She's got New Zealand, Ireland, Italy, Europe, Canada, the UK. She's got people that she talks to in the UK. She gets gifts, card stuff in the mail all the time from people just all over the world and all over, especially all over the country.”
O’Neal says her life has been a constant search for learning why she’s on this earth. “I've always wanted to be seen, be seen by somebody, you know, I've wanted to put my mark on the world. I've asked myself for years, Why am I here? What is it I'm supposed to be doing? I'm getting older. Time is passing me by. I want to know what my purpose is in being here.”
Her YouTube storytelling has helped O’Neal understand her mission in life. She offered advice for other senior citizens searching for purpose in the later years.
“You just got to think positive all the time. You have to force yourself to think positive, because especially if you live alone, what am I going to do today? Each day is the same. And I think Jan and Jessica recognized that I needed something. All of my projects had been done.”
O’Neal has learned it’s never too late to take on a new project. It just might be something that ends up being a huge part of your legacy.
“What are you doing with your life, and what are you here for? I've just done what I'm here for. I've given history. I've added to history. And if nobody else knows it but me, that doesn't matter, somebody's going to see it one of these days.”
Yes, they are.
Episodes of Chit Chat with Granny Pat can be found on YouTube.
