Photo: Courtesy of Stephanie Berger/PBS

By Kristi Turnquist | The Oregonian/OregonianLive

"We'll Meet Again," the PBS series that returns for Season 2 Nov. 13, will once again bring host and executive producer Ann Curry into conversation with people who lived through gripping moments in modern history.

But as Curry, the veteran TV journalist and University of Oregon graduate, said at the Television Critics Association summer press tour in July, she has her own reasons for being fascinated by the past, and how we process it.

"It was a mystery, and now it's solved," Curry said, regarding a long-unanswered question that plagued her late father. In an interview during the press tour in Beverly Hills, California, Curry said the answers to her father's background were found thanks to another PBS series, "Finding Your Roots."

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Ann Curry and participants Roger Wagner and Dr. Mayer Katz.in an episode of "We'll Meet Again" Season 2. Photo: Courtesy of Blink Films/PBS

Curry acts as a sort of guide on “We’ll Meet Again” and she received information on “Finding Your Roots.” But what unites both shows, she said, is finding universal meaning in the very specific, human stories of years ago.

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Ann Curry and participant Dave Johnson in "We'll Meet Again" Season 2. Photo: Courtesy of Blink Films/PBS

In “We’ll Meet Again,” people whose paths crossed amid such real-life events as the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, and the Mariel boatlift from Cuba share their stories and are sometimes reunited decades after they last saw one another.

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Henry Louis Gates Jr., Ann Curry, Tig Notaro, S. Epatha Merkerson and Joe Madison at the Television Critics Association 2018 press tour panel for "Finding Your Roots." Photo: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

In “Finding Your Roots,” Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the host who tells celebrity guests what researchers have learned about the guests’ personal history, including their ancestors and family tree.

At the TV press tour, Curry appeared on panels for both “We’ll Meet Again,” and Season 5 of “Finding Your Roots,” which is expected to premiere in early 2019.

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Ann Curry. Photo: Courtesy of David Turnley/PBS

“PBS called me,” Curry said in an interview, and asked if she would be one of the celebrity subjects on the new “Finding Your Roots” season. “I said yes, because of my family mystery.”

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Ann Curry. Photo: Courtesy of David Turnley/PBS

Curry was born in Guam, the child of an American father, Bob Curry, and a Japanese mother, Hiroe Nagase, who met in Japan after World War II. The family eventually moved to Ashland, where Curry attended Ashland High School, and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Oregon.

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Ann Curry in a photo from Season 1 of "We'll Meet Again." Photo: Courtesy of David Turnley/PBS

The “mystery” that motivated Curry to take part in “Finding Your Roots” had to do with her father’s parentage. During the press tour discussion of the PBS series’ fifth season, Curry said that, for his entire life, her father “had a great sadness and a deep secret,” because of not knowing who his father was.

His own mother wouldn’t tell him, Curry recalled. Though she tried to find the answers in research and DNA testing, the results weren’t helpful in the earlier, more limited era of genetic testing, Curry said.

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Ann Curry and other participants on the panel for Season 2 of "We'll Meet Again" at the Television Critics Association 2018 summer press tour. Photo: Courtesy of Rahoul Ghose/PBS

"When he died, that was the one sadness that I just couldn’t get over,” Curry said. “So, when I heard about this opportunity, I thought, yeah, I’m going to do it for dad.”

The upcoming episode that features Curry will reveal more about the process. But it turned out that the “Finding Your Roots” team were indeed able to determine the identity of her dad’s long-mysterious father.

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Ann Curry. Photo: Courtesy of David Turnley/PBS

It’s just that kind of intimate perspective “We’ll Meet Again” also offers, Curry said. In Season 1, and again in Season 2, the series focuses on people who recall having been helped by someone’s friendship, a doctor who intervened at the right time, and others who made a crucial difference in someone’s life.

Curry loves history, she said in an interview during press tour. “But there’s a limit to what you can understand when you’re removed from that first-person narrative.”

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When all you hear about history comes from the lofty perspective of the generals, politicians and writers, you’re removed from the front-line immediacy of what it was like to live through cataclysmic events, Curry said.

Curry also has found that even when “We’ll Meet Again” focuses on decades-old stories, the themes remain relevant to the times in which we’re living.

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A focus on immigration during a Holocaust-themed episode, for example, is as current as contemporary news reports, Curry said.

As Hitler rose to power in Germany, “there were many Jews who needed safe haven,” Curry said. America allowed some refugees in, but there was also a “’we don’t really want them there here,’ response,” Curry said. “These issues come up over and over again. A lot of the issues we deal with are ones we can find perspective about when we look into the past.”

“I knew the stories would be powerful, and they were important,” Curry said. “But I didn’t know that the stories would be timely.”

“We’ll Meet Again” Season 2 premieres at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 13 on PBS.

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Ann Curry at the Television Critics Association press tour in 2017. Photo: Frederick M. Brown/PBS

Related: Ann Curry on sexual harassment, and more

In an interview from early in 2018, Ann Curry told us about the controversy surrounding her former "Today" show co-host, Matt Lauer, and other issues, including sexual harassment and the #MeToo movement.

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Related: 21 memorable TV personalities from Portland's past

We included Ann Curry, who longtime Portlanders will remember from her days at KGW-TV, in our look back at Portland TV personalities from the past.

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