Meaningful gifts for military families and veterans
Meaningful gifts for military families and veterans honor their service and keep their stories: a shadow box of medals and patches, a digital photo frame the family can add to, recorded read alouds for deployments, or EverTold, where a veteran tells their story in their own words for the family.
Military families move often and spend long stretches apart. Grandparents may be a continent away, and a parent may be away for months. Gifts that travel well and keep people connected matter more than things.
Many veterans also carry stories their families have never heard in full. Some they want to tell; some they will tell only when asked the right way.
Ideas that travel well
EverTold: a veteran’s stories, told in their own words
A gentle interviewer asks one question at a time and waits. They choose what to share and how much. Their stories are written up, narrated and kept for the family, with their own recordings, and each relative hears them told from their own place: "your grandfather", "your great-grandfather". It needs only a browser, so it moves with the family.
A shadow box
Frame service photos, patches or medals with a card written by the family about what they mean.
A digital photo frame the family can add to
Relatives anywhere can send photos to it. A good gift for grandparents who are far from a family that moves.
Recorded read alouds
A parent or grandparent records bedtime books for the kids to play while they are apart.
Asking a veteran about their service
- Start with the everyday: basic training, the food, the friends, the places.
- Ask about people: who they served with and who they still think about.
- Let them lead. Some memories are hard, and "I would rather not talk about that" is a full answer.
- Ask about life after: coming home, and what they want the grandkids to know.
What only EverTold does
Each relative hears the story from their own place in the family
When Mom tells a story about her brother, her daughter hears it as a story about "your uncle" and her grandson hears "your great-uncle", read aloud in a warm storyteller’s voice. Every listener gets the version that makes sense to them.
Story time for the grandkids
A grandchild can tap a story at bedtime and hear it retold for a child: the same true story, simpler words, a gentler pace. Adults get the faithful telling.
A real conversation, not a writing assignment
EverTold asks a question out loud, listens, and follows up, like a patient grandchild on a phone call. It waits for them to finish. Nobody has to write a thing.
Their real voice, kept
The recordings of their answers are saved privately for the family, right next to the written stories, so you keep the way they actually sound.
Handed down for generations
A family library that keeps growing, paid for once. No subscription, no renewal, nothing to cancel.
The family can ask for more
Anyone in the family can send a question like "Mom, tell me about the farm". It goes to the real person, and their answer comes back as a new story.
The EverTold Forever Promise: One payment, no renewals, for as long as EverTold operates. Download everything any time. If EverTold ever closes, you get at least 6 months’ notice and then 90 days to download everything before anything is deleted. Read the full promise
A note from Dustin and Gabi
We are a husband and wife, and our family speaks two languages: Gabi’s side Portuguese, Dustin’s side English. When our kids asked about their great-grandfather in Brazil, who left home for the city as a teenager to build a life from nothing, we realized the details that make a person come alive had already been lost. He passed away before we asked him the questions that mattered most.
We still have parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles on both sides, with decades of stories we had never thought to ask about. So we built EverTold for our own family first, and we write these guides the way we choose gifts for them.
Give EverTold
One storyteller, a lifetime family library, paid once.
Two storytellers, usually Mom and Dad, sharing one family library, paid once.
One payment, no subscription. 30 day refund. Delivered by email on the day you choose.
Give EverToldQuestions
Who decides what a veteran shares?
They do. EverTold asks, and they choose what to answer. Stories are shared only with the family members they invite, and a single story link can be turned off at any time.
Does EverTold work after a move?
Yes. It runs in a web browser on any phone, tablet or computer with an internet connection, so there is nothing to reinstall when the family moves.