Hurricane Katrina inspires Lakewood Ranch man to build AI app to preserve family history
Marcus manages the day-to-day editorial workflow across all brands, coordinating coverage assignments and ensuring editorial standards are met. He previously served as city editor at the Pioneer Press and holds a degree in Political Science from Carleton College.
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A Lakewood Ranch creator turned deep family loss into a high-tech legacy preservation tool, building an artificial intelligence app designed to capture personal histories before they vanish.After Hurricane KatrinaWhen Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi in 2005, Mike O'Donnell's parents lost their retirement home in Pass Christian. The storm also destroyed three generations of family photo albums, home movies and other memories O'Donnell hoped his children would someday see."I was heartbroken. I'm like, that was for my kids to see one day," he said.Preserving oral historiesO'Donnell began reaching out to relatives and family friends for old photographs. As he collected them, he realized the pictures often came with stories that had never been written down and were instead passed from one generation to the next by word of mouth.That experience eventually inspired O'Donnell to create Leaves: Times of My Life, an app that uses AI to help people record and preserve those stories.How the app