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Charlie Greene, the cofounder and CEO of Remento, first learned about the importance of recording memories when his father, Don Greene, died during the hijacking of United Airlines Flight 93 on 9/11.
A 10-year-old boy at the time of the terrorist attack, which resulted in his father’s plane crashing in Shanksville, Penn., the now 34-year-old Greene mostly has a collection of old home videos to remember him by.
So when his mother Claudette, 74, was diagnosed with stage-three lung cancer, he quickly acted to record her memories. With the intention of conducting an oral history interview, Greene searched “Questions to ask a parent,” which Google morbidly autocompleted with “before they die.”
When he started asking her the questions like “How did you get to elementary school as a kid,” she lit up, surprised he was interested at all.
“The thing that blew me away about that experience was how unmorbid it felt,” he said.
Claudette is in remission, but her battle with cancer still left Greene “unhealthily fixated” on the idea of how to best preserve loved ones’ memories. In October 2023, he launched Remento, which sends older “storytellers” a weekly text or email reminder prompting them to respond to photos or questions chosen in advance by their family members, such as, “What was the hardest thing you had to overcome as a child?”
After gathering a max...
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