LI moms start Facebook Live show, ‘Every Family’s Got One,’ from their car
Barbara Herel of Huntington, left, and Kathy Radigan of East Northport started a website called Every Family's Got One. Credit: Barbara Herel and Kathy Radigan
Long Island has its own team of moms who broadcast from a car — Barbara Herel of Huntington and Kathy Radigan of East Northport started a website called Every Family’s Got One in January to feature writers’ essays about family life. Every Friday at 1 p.m. they get in Herel’s green Subaru and chat on Facebook about whatever topic that week’s essay covers.
“We have so much fun at it,” Radigan says. “I’ll speak for myself, I’m a born ham.”
Topics so far have included what kind of family they grew up in — messy? chaotic? loud? — and one woman’s saga of being a reluctant football mom. Essays can be inspiring, heartbreaking, humorous. “What’s funnier than a family story?” Herel says.
The duo accepts submissions from writers both local and not, and they post one piece a week. They currently don’t pay writers, though they say they hope that will change in the future. They are also planning to launch a live essay reading event on Long Island, also to be called “Every Family’s Got One.”
The car broadcasts, which the women also archive on their Facebook page, nwsdy.li/carmoms, weren’t originally intended to be filmed in the car. Herel, 54, who has a daughter, 9, and Radigan, 52, who has three children, ages 19, 16 and 13, meet every week at Caffe Portofino in Northport. They intended to do their broadcasting from inside the cafe. “We were a little too loud,” Herel says. “We said, ‘Let’s just go to the car before we annoy everyone.’ It was just out of desperation.”
Beth Whitehouse writes about families, parenting and great things to do with the kids on Long Island. She’s been a Newsday editor and shared a 1997 Newsday staff Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800.
