Brian Grimm would love to talk to the dead.

But lacking expertise in seances and exhumations, Grimm has decided to turn to the living.

Grimm, whose own name lives on at Grimm Road in Bayview, hopes to unearth some of the lost stories of Whidbey Island through other families whose names are connected to the roads of the South End.

Grimm, who was born and raised on South Whidbey, invites the community to join him and other longtime islanders to “South Whidbey Back Roads,” from 2 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 6 at Bayview Community Hall in Langley.

The hall is an apt place for such a gathering, Grimm said, because it was built by the island’s ancestors and is owned, to this day, by everyone in the community.

“My grandfather, Sammuel Grimm, used to show movies in Bayview Hall,” Grimm said. Now, as if to show the strength of Whidbey’s continuum, the grandson Grimm is the president of the hall.

Grimm is determined to strengthen that continuum even more.

There are about 90 roads on South Whidbey from Clinton to Classic Road in Greenbank, each to which Grimm has assigned a captain. Many of the captains are associated with their assigned roads through a family connection. The idea is to find out what family the road was named after, when the family arrived on the island, what year the road was built and if there are any living relatives or stories associated with the road.

Grimm has managed to find about 50 people who are connected to the roads, and he hopes the information they bring to the hall will encourage other islanders to delve into their own stories.

“My family has been here since 1912,” Grimm said. “We represent longevity in the community. But a lot more stories were buried with my grandfather and his brother Fred. That’s a shame.”

Grimm’s great-uncle Fred owned the gas station across the street from the Cash Store in Bayview, while his grandfather, Sammuel Grimm, ran one of the first island taxis and owned a chicken-and-egg farm where Double R Rentals and Sales now sits. Grimm Road was named after Sammuel in the 1940s.

“All that history is in a box in the cemetery that we’ve locked away, and so much of that history is lost because we didn’t ask enough questions,” Grimm said.

Some road stories turn out to be dead ends. Betty Moore asked questions and discovered the county made a mistake.

Moore is descended from the Jewett family, though her history is not connected to Jewett Road near Cultus Bay Road.

“That’s another Jewett family who I think are no longer on the island,” Moore said.

Moore said her mother was a Jewett, and her grandparents were the Petersons.

It was her grandfather Peterson who deeded the road now known as Thompson Road to the county. Because it was the Thompson family who needed the road in order to get to their house, Island County mistakenly named it Thompson Road instead of Peterson Road.

“Somebody back then was naming roads who probably had never even been on the island,” Moore said. “They got it wrong.”

The Petersons settled on the island in the 1800s, and Moore grew up in Oak Harbor, where another road, Lang Road, was named for her father’s family.

“My dad was a North End boy who married a South End girl and that’s how I ended up down here,” she said.

Another South Whidbey girl has three roads associated with her family.

Myrna Orr Twomey recalls her Norwegian grandparents’ dairy farm in the Clinton neighborhood where Orr, Berg and Conrad Roads entwine within a ¼ mile area.

The Orr Dairy Farm was settled in 1890 on 168 acres at Orr and Humphrey roads.

“Everybody knew who the Orrs were, and that was where you went to get your cream and milk,” Twomey said.

The dairy had about 30 guernsey and jersey cows, breeds known for giving a high-content cream and butterfat in the milk, something the Scandinavians loved.

Her father, Conrad Orr, was hoping World War II would get him away from the cows for a spell, but ended up running the farm until 1945. Conrad Road is named for him.

Twomey said Berg Road came from the other side of her family, named after her great-aunt and great-uncle Marta and Chris Berg.

“I have no idea where the Bergs have gone. Everybody’s gone and it’s kind of a dead end,” she said of her search to find the stories.

Twomey said her grandparents had 16 grandchildren, and she is the only one left on the island. Many of her relatives had been loggers and had to leave eventually for economic reasons. She, too, was happy to go when she went off to the University of Washington at 18 and discovered music, the ballet and the fact that society was not made up of only white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

“But once I had children and was back on the island, I knew it was the best place in the world to grow up. I was lucky to be able to live on the beach. But, there is so much I wish

I had asked my dad,” Twomey said.

That’s the point that Grimm would like to drive home to generations of Whidbey families.

The idea, he said, behind the South Whidbey Back Roads gathering is to give all the people who have longevity in the community a chance to revisit Bayview Hall, have a picnic and get together to share stories without it having to be a wedding or a funeral.

“It’s real important to share,” Grimm said.

“I get goosebumps up the back of my neck when people tell these stories. Lots of things feel twice as good inside when you share these stories.”

Not only does Grimm want to clarify the history of the South End roads and families, but he envisions the project being developed as a teaching tool for schools in the area. The roads, he said, can inform us about how the community was built from its raw, undeveloped landscape and the sequence of how South Whidbey came to be.

“Think of it as a kind of family reunion,” he said. “And write down what Uncle Fred said before he dies.”

Prizes will be awarded for the oldest person, youngest person, farthest traveled, arrival to island first, most people representing the road, most roads in a family, proof your family helped build the hall, and more.