Meet Opa

Bring us the box. We'll bring back the stories.

Upload what one person left behind. We read every page and hand back their life, in a form the grandkids will open.

Request a spot How it works

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See what Unboxed can do for your family.

One story, with its sources

Three scraps from Opa's box. One story you can check.

WHAT WAS IT LIKE LEARNING TO DRIVE?I distinctly remember building this with my father at the 'shop in the shop'.

A page. From the life stories he wrote at 70.

A boy in a helmet in a soapbox racer on a hill — **A picture.** A racer like his. This one is a drawing.

PAGE 37...without a driver's license, obtained in August 1972.

Another page. Seven years later.

What comes back

Story · Joy and humor · 1965

The Soapbox Racer

About 1965, Opa and his father built a soapbox racer in the workroom at the family meat plant. It steered with a rope and his feet. The brake dragged a piece of 2x4 along the road.¹

No other boy in his Cub pack had one. "So, I won every proclaimed race by default."¹

He got his license in August 1972.² "Driving. One of my all-time favorite things."¹

Life stories, page 36
Life stories, page 37

A story in Opa's box

We don't rewrite a life. We put the scraps in order and show where each sentence came from.

A grandchild searches "racer" and finds it.

Every sentence has a number. Every number points to a page in the box.

How it works

Three steps. No forms.

Upload the box

Letters, journals, photos. Phone pictures work. Messy is fine.
We do the work

We read every page, handwriting included, and put it in order. It takes about a week.
Unbox it together

Invite the family. Everyone sees all that you share, and starts with the stories they're in.

More about how it works

What a box is

One box. One person's whole life.

Their words

Every page typed out, with the original beside it.

Their timeline

One line, from birth onward.

Their people and places

Pick your own name. See the stories you're in.

The questions still open

A missing year becomes a question for someone who remembers.

The box asks back

Questions only your family could be asked.

These came out of Opa's box. Nobody wrote them from a list.

A story he promised You owe us the jet ski semi final.

Named and never told Tell us the Christmas Card Incident and the Ladder Gift Incident.

For his brother Tell us about the day the cowboys in the Cadillac drove past, and if you made it up.

Once it's open

What you can do with the box.

Share the box

Invite the family. Everyone sees all that you share, starts with the stories they're in, and can add what they remember.

Build the book

Pick a format. We choose the stories and lay out the pages. You get a file you can print. See the formats.

Coming soon

Ask the box

"What was Opa doing at my age?" An answer in plain words, with the pages it came from.