Mar Preston began working for the Longitudinal Study of Generations in 1985 in what was meant to be a short-term job. After spending many years as the Fieldwork Coordinator, Preston has moved on in order to pursue another cause close to her heart, but her time working on the project has left an impression on both her and those who worked with her.
     Preston started during a crucial time for the project. “I arrived just after new funding gave us the chance to contact the original study members after a 13 year gap,” she said. “It was hard. My job was to ask people to recall a questionnaire they filled out in 1971 and persuade them to take part again. Back then the only way we could find people after so long was through death records, the California DMV and piles of telephone books. My best success then — as now — was to find a grandmother with a thick address book. She was what we called ‘The Kinkeeper.’”
     Over the course of years, Preston developed telephone relationships with people she never met, but it was difficult having to make phone calls reminding participants to turn in their surveys. “We were often biting our fingernails waiting for the surveys to come back, knowing that the success of the study for all of us was getting your survey back,” she said.
     “Besides that, we were often eager to read what had happened with you and your family. In the three years between surveys, terrible family problems or personal issues seemed to have resolved themselves. What had looked like irreconcilable breaches between the generations might have been superceded by the illness of a beloved grandparent.
     “Watching the sweep of the generations is the value of a longitudinal study. Families aren’t static. They grow and change and watching this was the exciting part of my job.”
     Preston also had the opportunity of interviewing a small number of families who lived in the Los Angeles area. “I’m sure they never realized the impact that they had on the interviewers,” she said. “Years later we would be poring over their words and stories, remembering them so vividly, trying to learn from them how families worked.”
     During her years with the project, Preston saw nearly a generation of graduate students move through the study, finding mentors among the senior faculty and working doggedly on study data until they finished a Ph.D. Now they are dotted around the country teaching at major universities and research centers. “I developed intense friendships with the people I worked with and observed and participated in family transitions with them,” she said.
     Still, after so many years, Preston grew restless and found herself embroiled in a local controversy fighting for a living wage for tourism workers in Santa Monica, Calif. “I saw the effect that hardscrabble poverty had on family life and felt compelled to do something direct for people whose lives involved so much struggle,” Preston said.
     Preston decided to leave the Longitudinal Study of Generations to dedicate more of her time to the living wage cause, but the experiences she had and the things she learned from the participants of the project will always remain with her.
     “I learned so much about myself and tolerance for my own family from you, the participants,” she said. “Thanks to all of you who touched my life in ways you never know. Thank you for your stories, your memories, your wisdom.”

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