Once upon a time, there was a college student who was fascinated by family history. On weekends, she would leave her campus in Boston and take the streetcar to visit her grandmother at her nearby apartment. Along with enjoying plenty of chatting and snacking, this student would ask her grandmother to pull out the old family photo albums and then would write down all the names, places and events her grandmother told her about those pictures.

It was a great idea -- except the student didn't know until about fifteen years later that there was another album her grandmother had never told her about. An album with pictures going back to around 1910 or earlier.

Pictures like the one above. Photos glued tightly in a construction-paper album. Photos not labeled at all.

It's moments like this that make family historians tear their hair out.

By the time I happened upon this gem, my grandmother was deep in her 90s, in a retirement home and nearly blind. Her sister was dead.

Who were these people in the photos? By comparing them to family portraits that were labeled, I can hazard a couple of fair guesses -- for instance, I believe the man at the wheel was my great-grandfather Burnett Lewis (1865-1917) and the woman with the white head covering (without the big bow) was my great-grandmother Ellyn (Cranitch) Lewis (1867-1949). I could also see tantalizing family resemblances that make me suspect that others in the pictures are siblings and other relatives of my great-grandfather, but oh, how wonderful it would be to KNOW.

Perhaps my great-grandfather thought he would get around to labeling the pictures in his old age, but then he died the day after he turned 52.

I look at the photo below, which I believe shows Ellyn and Burnett with their children, Edith (my great-aunt, 1903-1995) and her older sister -- my grandmother, Marion (1899-1999). Then I look at the two pictures below that, and while I can make a possible case for my grandmother being in the back seat of both of them, I am not at all sure the girl in the front is Aunt Edith.







The lesson here is clear and doesn't need to be spelled out, but I'll do it anyway in the interest of posterity:

* If you have older relatives, connect with them TODAY and make sure all their pictures get labeled (full names, dates, places, events), even if you have to sit with them and do the writing yourself!

* Label your own pictures!

Let's not let our family history die with us.

Seventeen years ago today, I had a baby.

For several years, my husband and I had wanted to have a child, but month after month that hope had been coming up empty. I'd see moms holding babies or pushing them in strollers, and I'd feel the pang: Will we ever have that?

Finally, it was the summer of 1991, I was 'late' enough to hope, and -- at last -- I had a positive pregnancy test. I jumped into my car and drove over to hubby's office to give him the good news in person. We were going to have a baby!

We were also a day away from leaving for a two-week trip to Maine. I tossed my copy of "What to Expect When You're Expecting" into my suitcase and we set off for a journey up the coast for a few nights each at bed and breakfasts in Kennebunkport, Camden, Georgetown and Bar Harbor, with a friend's wedding on our return trip.

I think it was the first day in Camden when I woke up and discovered the joys of morning sickness. "Honey," I mumbled in a queasy haze, "could you go see if our hostess has any Saltines?"

Then came the moment that made me spend the rest of the trip -- and, frankly, the pregnancy -- on pins and needles. One morning, rolling out of bed and heading to the bathroom, I discovered some bleeding. It wasn't a lot, but it terrified me. Was I losing my baby?

In these early-morning hours before the days of cell phones, I grabbed my copy of "What to Expect" and did what I've since learned you absolutely should not do: I read every word of every thing that could go wrong.

And scared myself even further to death.

While we had a wonderful trip, I began making that shift that new moms make when they become fierce mama tigers, ready to defend their cubs against the world. I evaluated all potential risks to my baby -- rowing in the Maine waters, dancing at the wedding reception -- and tried to make sensible choices for the tiny one entrusted to my care.

And when we got home, I got an immediate ultrasound to make sure our baby was all right. Thankfully, the answer was yes. As for the morning sickness, it continued at least into the second trimester, but I never actually lost my breakfast (or lunch or dinner).

That Christmas, in Massachusetts with my family, was special; all the carols about Mary and her baby spoke to me as never before, and with me in full bulge mode (six months along!) and getting baby gifts, it all began to seem real and possible and fun!

I remember singing songs to my baby as I drove places.

As spring grew nearer, some friends threw me a fantastic baby shower, and they only grumbled a little about our decision to not find out the baby's sex in advance, since they knew it from a later ultrasound. I decided I would breastfeed my baby and connected with local nursing mothers' groups (this is invaluable so you will know in advance who to call with new-baby nursing questions at 2 a.m.!). And of course, hubby and I also took the requisite labor classes with the "hee-hee" breathing; however, if you want to know how it works in practice, you'll have to ask someone else because I never needed any of it, as you'll see below.

My due date was in mid-March, and I was about two weeks overdue so they decided to induce me. They suggested a birth date of April 1st, and I said, "Given the choice, I'm not having my child born on April Fool's Day!" I suggested April 2nd, which had been my grandfather's birthday, and I liked that connection.

So on April 2nd, we jumped into the car (okay, hubby jumped -- I lumbered!), and we headed off to Bryn Mawr Hospital, where they pumped me full of Pitocin for an entire day to induce labor.

Nothing happened.

Hubby said it was because the baby was cozy and didn't want to leave -- he had free food, drink, shelter, and cable! :-)

After a whole day of this, they gave up and sent us home. We went to Friendly's and had hot-fudge sundaes.

The next morning, Friday, April 3rd, we went back to the hospital and started it all again. As before, I was ready with my labor "focal point" (a stuffed kitten), and some reading material for those long hours with Pitocin. As it happened, I had been reading a book that I think was called "Maternity Ward," which included, among other things, a detailed description of a C-section.

Meanwhile, the Pitocin was pumping. On the paper the machine was spitting out, I was having great contractions. But there I was, sitting up with my earphones on, be-bopping to music, clearly without a care (or a pain) in the world.

The doctors began giving me weird looks.

This went on all day.

Evening came. At about 5:25, I was watching the news when the medical staffed swooped into my room and informed me I was going to have a Caesarean. They wheeled me off to the operating room, rolled me onto a table, gave me an epidural (and probably a few other things I thankfully forget), and set to work doing things I couldn't see because they set up a little curtain between my top and the Baby Area. Meanwhile, hubby was installed in a chair in the corner where he could provide moral support.

The anesthesiologist asked me what we were going to name the baby, so I gave him the boy's and girl's name options.

I could hear the doctors asking for instruments, and I was snickering because I remembered them all from the maternity-ward book! I remember at one point saying excitedly to hubby, "Oooh, the belly blade! They're getting close!"

The doctors, at this point, thought I was REALLY weird.

And at 6:21 p.m., a miraculously healthy and beautiful 8 lb., 3 ounce, 21-inch baby boy emerged from my body. The anesthesiologist announced, "It's a [the boy's name I'd told him]!"

Seventeen years ago today, I had a baby.

Today, the 'baby' is a junior in high school -- caring, honest, hardworking, brilliant, fiercely individual, and taller than me -- and tonight my hubby and I gave him a big hug and took him out to dinner.

Happy 17th Birthday, Fudgeteen!

Less than a week after paying tribute to one grandmother, I remember the loss of the other, who died March 10, 1978.

She had a wonderful flower garden and she created dried flower arrangements in whatever she had handy, including seashells or cosmetic jars, as befits the practical New England housewife she was. Grandma's death came when I was in high school, so I missed out on spending time with her in my adult years, but there was something in me even then that loved seeing she had a spark of the artist in her. I got permission to keep a shoebox full of her dried flower art, along with a couple of arrangements that had been framed. As the years go by, some of the flowers crumble and fall, but fortunately many more of them still endure.

Here are some pictures of these in Grandma's memory:

Here's a shot of yours truly with my cousin David, when we were about five years old --

He has less hair now but I, of course, look exactly the same! :-)

Meme time!

Wits and Wiggles snuck up behind me and memed me. She asked me to write "six random things" about myself, so I did, and I'm afraid I got on quite a roll!

Being a contrarian, I'm not tagging anyone for this one, but I do encourage you all to give it a try; I enjoyed my trip down memory lane.

Now, the six random things....

GOOFY:



My first car was a white four-door 1966 Plymouth Belvedere. My grandparents bought it new for around $3,000 -- trading in their ‘57 Buick Roadmaster -- and I remember the childhood excitement of coming home after school and seeing the car parked in front of our house because a good visit was in store. After Grampa died when I was 9 and Gramma moved to an apartment on a streetcar line, my parents got the car. Then, when I graduated from college and needed wheels in the mid-1980s, my parents turned the car over to me. Because the last three letters of the license plate were “GFD,” I named the car “Goofy.”

It was huge and loud, and my first repair bill was about $900 because it was clogged with carbon and stalled at an intersection in midwinter near our first apartment, but I loved that car. It took me everywhere I wanted to go, and it saved my hubby’s life when someone plowed into the driver’s-side door while he was driving. He still teases me because when he called to tell me about the accident (about 20 years ago), before I asked about him I immediately said, “Is the car okay?” He says the only reason he lived was that car was built like a tank.

We kept Goofy into our son’s early childhood -- thanks to Grampa investing in extra undercoating to postpone the car’s rusting -- and the only reason we finally sold it was it was the repairs were getting too expensive. We got one last story out of that car; when we drove it to the guy who was taking it off our hands for $50, I tripped on his gravel driveway, banged my head on the car, broke my glasses, and had to get stitches on my forehead.

Hubby and I call it “Goofy’s Revenge.”

MY FIRST "WALDEN":



My favorite vacation spot growing up was in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire -- a cottage by Pemigewasset Lake in New Hampton, at “Pemi Shores Motel & Cottages.” My grandparents told my parents about the place ca. the mid-1960s, and from then on through my childhood, we went up for a week or two every summer. Each cottage had a name, and we usually stayed in “Anna,” a shaded cottage right by the lake, or “Bob,” which was behind Anna. My grandparents sometimes stayed there at the same time.

This is where I first grew to love nature in general and lakes in particular; Pemi was a crystal-clear lake with a large sandy beach, and I was always swimming to “the rock” (a huge barely-submerged rock that kids could jump off) or the raft. I also did a lot of rowing to the island, a fun place to explore, and once a group of us swam to the island -- something my parents weren’t too happy about because I neglected to tell them first!

As I got older, I found myself taking notes about and pictures of the lake, trying to capture it in its different moods throughout the day.

There were always kids there to swim, float on inflatable rafts, and play “Marco Polo” with, or hang out with at the beachside picnic tables for card games like “I Doubt It.” A number of the kids were the same from year to year because their fathers attended an annual local conference. We would also stroll up to the restaurant for ice-cream cones.

About once each vacation week, my parents would take me into the White Mountains, to ride the Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway and hike around at the summit. We would drive along the scenic Kancamagus Highway and stop to climb on the rocks at Rocky Gorge on Swift River. And we would always visit the Old Man of the Mountain -- sadly gone now.

We’d spend evenings out at dinner at Hart’s Turkey Farm Restaurant or Tamarack Restaurant Drive-In (my favorites: their tuna roll and chocolate frappe), have a round of mini-golf at Funspot (where the holes were miniature scale models of New Hampshire landmarks like the Lake Winnipesaukee cruise ship the M/S Mount Washington, the Mt. Washington Cog Railway, and the Jackson covered bridge -- and even a hole called “Waldo the Whale”!), and make our own sundaes at Kellerhaus and sit at old-fashioned ice cream parlor tables and listen to a player piano. Perched at the top of each Kellerhaus sundae was a tiny American flag on a toothpick.

From time to time we still get back to New Hampshire. Although Pemi is now privately owned, we revisit as many as possible of my beloved old haunts, and it is wonderful to share them with a new family and a new generation!


A BABE IN THE POLITICAL WOODS:



My first foray into politics was during the 1980 presidential election, when I volunteered for Ted Kennedy. I was a Massachusetts native in college in Boston at the time, and I did some typing at his Boston campaign office. The first day I was there (Jan. 28), television cameras showed up, and later people came up to me and said, “Hey, I saw you on the news at 6!” Somewhere, I have some snapshots I took that week at the office when he and his wife Joan came to a reception, where I got to shake hands with him. One of the pictures was taken of a man I ran into in the elevator -- Michael Dukakis! And Joe Kennedy came to my college and gave a humor-filled speech in a student lounge on behalf of Teddy.

I went canvassing for Kennedy in Manchester, NH, where I met RFK’s daughter Courtney Kennedy and the staff sent me out with a woman who had an interesting feature -- she looked just like Jackie O! (Seriously! She wore a T-shirt with a dot-matrix design of her own face, and people asked her why she had a shirt of Mrs. Onassis...) My funniest memory of canvassing with her was this one apartment building we went to. We knocked on a door, and immediately heard some very loud, aggressively ferocious barking. Then the lady behind the door said, “Down, Benji!” My canvass partner and I looked at each other: Benji?!!!!

Last spring, Ted Kennedy came down here to PA to speak at my county's Democratic Committee dinner, and I wanted so much to go but didn't because it was my son's 16th birthday. That campaign in '80 sparked my lifelong interest in politics, and it came full circle when the senator endorsed Barack Obama and I worked on that campaign. Hard to believe it all started almost 30 years ago...

BECAUSE OF JANE FONDA



It’s because of Jane Fonda that I met my husband!

In 1979, around the time Jane Fonda was starring in the movie “Nine to Five,” she and her then-husband Tom Hayden came to Simmons College, where I was a freshman, and made a speech on the “Quad,” the grassy area next to the dorms. I went to hear them, and I ended up sharing blanket space and conversation with a fellow student, and through her met her roommate and roommate’s friend. Five years later, from those connections, I was introduced to my future hubby.

As a result, I’ve always perked up whenever Jane is mentioned; seems strange that I wouldn’t have my better half or my son without her!

HOMES



I grew up in only one home -- in Needham, MA, the house where my parents have lived for 50 years -- and since then have lived in only four more: Boston, MA (in college, 1979-83), Woburn, MA (part of 1985; our first apartment after marriage), King of Prussia, PA (our apartment from 1986-89 when we moved for hubby’s job), and Royersford, PA -- our house since 1989. It’ll be 20 years here in March!

BY ANY OTHER NAME...



When I was pregnant, I wouldn’t let my doctor tell me if I was going to have a boy or a girl; I wanted the big moment to be a surprise. As a result, hubby and I planned boy and girl names. If our child had been a girl, she would have been named “Sara Beth.”

For a boy’s name, we followed the very scientific method of each poring through the baby-name book and separately writing down our top three choices, then comparing notes and reaching a final decision.

We did this -- but after all that, we ended up naming our son after my father!

What six random things can we learn about YOU?

Sorting through some family-history papers this week, I came across a short poem my grandfather wrote -- perfect to share with you tonight.

"From Bethlehem, Long Ago

Gleaming in candle-lit windows,
Singing of Love to end tears,
Lo, how the starshine and angels' song
Reach across two thousand years!"

J. B. Knox
Dec. 24, 1946."

Warmest Christmas wishes to you and yours!

Thanksgiving weekend gave another reason to be thankful: I found Clara.

Clara, my grandfather's half-sister, was a missing branch on my family tree. She was the product of my great-grandfather's second marriage (my grandfather and I descend from his third). Born in 1890, she was listed in the 1900 U.S. Census for Massachusetts as living with my great-grandparents, her older brother, and my 1-year-old future grandpa.

Then she disappeared.

I could not find her anywhere in the 1910 census, and my only clue was a Massachusetts city directory I found later from that time; it said she had moved to Philadelphia. By then, she would have been about 20 years old, and could moved anywhere, married -- or died. I looked in Philadelphia marriage indexes, but did not see her.

Without more information, I was not able to track her down in the 1920 or 1930 censuses. This is what family-history buffs call a "brick wall." The brick wall stayed firmly in place for years.

Within the last couple of years, I eked out one more clue -- her name, approximate age, and correct birthplace cropped up in a 1916 passenger list for a ship coming from Bermuda. The ship list gave her current address, in a suburb of Philadelphia. She seemed to be traveling with a friend, but a second check of the censuses for her and for the friend yielded nothing.

Flash forward to Thanksgiving weekend. I was noodling around online late at night, and I found an intriguing historical-newspaper database. I put it through its paces by entering in various family names, including hers.

Bingo!

The story I pieced together from the newspaper articles was this: Clara had come to the Philly suburbs, gone to nursing school, and become a registered nurse. At some point, she had met a man who was a local undertaker, and she married him in 1920.

Sadly, in 1930, she became ill and died at age 40. Her husband remarried several years later. With that information, I found Clara and her husband in the 1930 census, but they were not listed with any children.

I decided to pay my respects at Clara's grave site, and went there the day after Thanksgiving. After leaving some flowers at her tombstone, on my grandfather's behalf and my own, I made one more stop.

I went to Clara's late husband's funeral home, which I had found out was still being run by his descendants, although at a different location in the same municipality. I explained who I was and why I was there -- and I was promptly introduced to the 70-year-old son of Clara's widower!

He couldn't have been nicer, and he filled me in on a missing piece of the story; the 'illness' Clara died of was actually childbirth, and she was buried with the baby -- something not mentioned in the burial records I had obtained from the cemetery. The man also mentioned that some of Clara's family members visited his father many years later.

We had an amazing chat for about half an hour. I arranged to send him some of the clippings I've found about his family, and he said he will rummage around in his attic this winter and see what he can find about Clara.

After all these years, it is amazing to be able to reconstruct Clara's past -- and thereby, a portion of my grandfather's -- and bring more of my family's story to life.

Rest in peace, Clara. You, and your baby, are remembered.

"Last December 13th, there appeared in the newspapers the juiciest, spiciest, raciest obituary it has ever been my pleasure to read."
-- Tom Lehrer, in his preface to the song "Alma."

Tom should read this obituary! Meet the spirited, spunky and stylish Ruth Elizabeth (Sechrist) Rencevicz -- 28 August 1927 to 7 September 2008.

I'm pretty sure you've never seen an obit quite like this one!

Genealogy buffs are always strolling through cemeteries, but two recent excursions brought a little something extra...

Sunday Strollers:

[Photo taken at North Cemetery, Sturbridge, MA, August 2008.]


Remember Me With a Cold One:

[Photo taken at Newton Cemetery, Newton, MA, August 2008.]

I want this license plate!

(P.S.: Even if you don't want a new plate, check Dick's blog if you're at all into genealogy; he has published his newsletter for many years and it's a don't-miss.)

Today was Grampa's birthday.

His legacy was not only two children and four grandchildren (and now six great-grandchildren), but words -- words announcing breaking stories in newspapers across America for more than 40 years, words shaped into stories and many poems, words jotted down about his children's sayings, words from classic poems read quietly to himself or aloud to his grandchildren. I had the pleasure of knowing him until I was nine, and I remember his dramatic readings of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Children's Hour":

"Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations,
That is known as the Children's Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair."

Or Alfred Noyes' "The Highwayman":

"The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding,
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door."

And another favorite of his, Longfellow's "The Song of Hiawatha":

"By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis..."

John Oscar Knox was born on Easter Sunday, 2 April 1899, a bright, cold day with occasional snow flurries, in the town of Great Barrington, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, at the southwestern corner of the state. His parents were a 52-year-old Scottish immigrant named Hugh Knox and Hugh's third wife, less than half his age, Swedish immigrant Cecelia Elizabeth Borg. John had a younger brother named Hugh and a much younger adopted brother, Herman.

On Monday, 25 June 1917, John Oscar Borg Knox was a member of Searles High School's 37-member graduating class, one of the five class members in the commercial rather than the college-preparatory program. He also, noted the Berkshire Courier newspaper three days later, wrote the words to the class song.

He got right to work, according to the 26 July 1917 issue of The Berkshire Courier: "John Knox has taken a position at Hull's coal yard and has been appointed a weigher of coal." With his poetic soul, I suspect this job was a matter of economic necessity. The AP World obituary on him noted, "The father's health failed while John was still a youngster and John worked hard at various jobs all through high school to help support his parents and a younger brother." He became supervisor of the coal yard and ended up working there for three years, but he wanted a career in journalism; in high school he had published his own typewritten newspaper and passed it around for free.

As World War I was drawing to a close, he was 19 when he enlisted on 1 October 1918 as a private in the Students' Army Training Corps (S.A.T.C.) Williams College Unit in Williamstown, Mass. A Nov. 23, 1918 letter exists granting him a Thanksgiving furlough from the post, "from Wednesday, November 27, at 12:15 P.M., until Friday, November 29, at noon ... to visit his parents who are in Great Barrington, Mass." He was honorably discharged from the United States Army on 12 December 1918 at the expiration of his term of service; his discharge papers described him as having "excellent" character, and blue eyes, red hair, fair complexion, and being 5 feet 6 1/2 inches tall.

He finally had the chance to begin working in a field that suited his love of writing and his intense curiosity about the world. His early journalism work was with the Springfield (Mass.) Republican in the early 1920s. I think it was my grandmother who told me that when he interviewed for this job, he was asked if he knew about sports. He said yes -- then quickly boned up on sports! After three years at the Republican and a year at the Rochester Post-Express, Grampa began his 41-year career with the Associated Press in 1923 at its Boston bureau, being a night editor, day editor, staff feature writer, second-in-command under the Boston bureau chief, and acting bureau chief. His stories appeared under the byline John B. Knox. He worked mostly at the Boston bureau, with a short stint in New York City later in the 1920s, where he saw Charles Lindbergh's ticker-tape parade down Broadway from his office window.

As an AP staffer, he broke the stories of the discovery of the 'new' planet Pluto, then called "Planet X," in 1930, and the Marshall Plan. He said of the latter in Yankee magazine, where he reminisced about his career in an article in the January 1966 issue called "Looking Backwards," "One of the great New England stories of all time came out of a Harvard Commencement, June 5, 1947. I bulletined for international distribution the announcement by Secretary of State George C. Marshall of his plan to restore the economies of Free Europe and halt the march of communism."

He covered a lot of other high-profile stories, including President Calvin Coolidge's funeral (after having been with Coolidge at his son's graveside), the Brinks robbery trial, Prohibition-day smuggling across the Canadian border, the welcome home for the Navy's first round-the-world fliers, the Coconut Grove nightclub fire in Boston in 1942 that killed 491 people, the replacement of steam locomotives by diesel-powered engines, the 1930 resurrection of the U.S.S. Constitution -- also known as "Old Ironsides," the nation's oldest warship, shipwrecks, missing persons, and Robert Frost's death, a story that won him a personal tribute from the AP's general manager. He also interviewed Frost (and received personal notes from the poet; one thanked him for "the best kind of good talk together"), as well as historian Arnold Toynbee, writer Sinclair Lewis and former Massachusetts Governor and Boston Mayor James Michael Curley, among other dignitaries. But his particular interests were science, literature, New England lore, and education (he was an official adviser to the Massachusetts school system); when he retired, the president of Harvard wrote that "the public and the Associated Press have been extraordinarily fortunate in having you as an interpreter."

He also wrote human-interest stories such as one a newspaper tribute described this way: "One of the Knox stories that prompted nationwide response told of the 1956 death by cancer of a 9-year-old boy who through his final stay in the hospital published a tiny newspaper with four daily editions."

By the time he retired, he was called "the dean of New England AP staffers."

He was fortunate enough to have a career that continued throughout the Depression and the years of raising a family. On 27 September 1924 in Boston, the 25-year-old editor married a 25-year-old stenographer, Marion H. Lewis. They raised their two children mainly in Arlington, Mass., and Newtonville, Mass. (where they lived from 1941 till 1970); their marriage continued until his death on 9 November 1970 from kidney cancer.

Poetry was a passion for him, and he owned hundreds of books of poems. Many of the poems he read and wrote held a lingering sense of melancholy, but also a deep love of nature that must have had its roots in the rivers, mountains and valleys around the hometown of his youth. In 1919 he wrote "Winter Sunset In Berkshire":

"The winter's day has drawn to its close,
Behind the hills the sun has sunk to rest,
The light is slowly fading in the west,
And twilight deepens into night's repose.

In silence, hushed and still, all nature lies,
No sound is heard upon the frosty air,
The fields of white and forest, gray and bare,
Merge in the gath'ring gloom as daylight dies.

Somber and eternal rise the hills
In brooding silence framed against the sky,
Their lofty summits, rising straight and tall,
Reminding us of Him, above Life's ills,
Who, deathless and all-seeing, reigns on high,
Who marks even the humble sparrow's fall."

Many years later, on November 25, 1963, he wrote another poem, "Always To Be Young," which was likely about the death of John F. Kennedy. The poem ended with the words,

"May one yet share a dream you still behold;
To dream ahead is always to be young.
Only when all dreams end can you be old."

I carry this lesson with me, along with his poems, newspaper stories and other mementos. I think about how I, too, came to write poems and stories and became a news reporter and feature writer. How I would love to share those experiences with him!

Happy Birthday, Grampa. I miss you.

I'm drowning in ancestors!

More than 20 years ago, I started researching my ancestry. It started out slowly -- a few letters back and forth with my grandmother, a few family pictures. Not a problem.

Then I discovered research repositories. I started photocopying pages from published family histories and printing out pages from the U.S. Census. I three-hole punched the family-history pages and put them in binders, and slipped the census pages into large envelopes. Still not a problem.

Over the years, more and more papers began piling up: birth, marriage and death certificates, naturalizations, ship lists, newspaper wedding stories and obituaries, letters to and from Internet cousins, and more. My organizational system began to slip away, bit by bit.

Finally, the deluge hit. My grandmother and great-aunt died, my parents began to think about downsizing, and I ended up with family photos and documents galore because I didn't want them getting thrown out. I couldn't find things I needed when I needed them. I realized how large and disorganized my collection had gotten.

So now I'm on a mission. I'm creating new three-ring binders for each line, subdivided by document category (vital records, newspaper stories, city-directory pages, naturalizations, correspondence, and so on). I'm part way to getting each subdivision into chronological order -- invaluable for creating timelines and seeing what documentation I still need on a person. For family lines I have less information on, I have 10 x 13 envelopes. I am labeling my photographs (mine and the inherited ones), and putting them all in one place so I can scan them as needed. And the whole kit-and-caboodle is in one specific location in my house -- or at least, we're getting there.

That's one reason I haven't blogged much this week; I'm on a roll.

Can anyone relate to this scenario?

What is your system for saving, organizing and identifying family memorabilia?

[When I helped clear out my grandmother's apartment some years ago, I found, on the high shelf of her bedroom closet, a stack of very old envelopes tied with a pink ribbon. These envelopes turned out to contain love letters from the 1890s, from my great-grandfather, Burnett Lewis, to my great-grandmother, Ellyn Cranitch, before their marriage. His nickname was Bert; hers, Nellie. Only one letter from her to him survives.

The letter transcribed below was in an envelope postmarked Feb. 14, 1895, which was a Thursday. I have taken the liberty to divide into paragraphs what was originally one long paragraph, written in a bold scrawl.]

Thursday

Dear Nellie,

I am fearfully sorry to hear that you are not well -- and pray that you will be yourself again in a few days. I was looking forward to a happy time with you Friday night. And though I can forgo that pleasure with a faint feeling, it is your own dear self that I worry about. And I hope to see you Sunday just as bright as a dollar.

I blame myself now for being so selfish Monday night. And as I am partly to blame for your present illness -- cannot I do anything for you? If you will be unable to see me Sunday -- can I call and see you? Please let me -- and I will reciprocate some time -- I hope not.

Now Nellie -- keep a stiff upper lip -- to be slangy -- and get well again as quick as you can.

With lots of love and heartily wishing you a speedy recovery I am as ever

Yours,
Bert.

"Christmas--that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance--a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved."
--Augusta E. Rundel

Who are your “ghosts of Christmas past”?

Mine are stored on a 26-year-old Radio Shack cassette tape, which I labeled "Ghosts of Christmas Past (1981)." That Christmas, I was on vacation from college, spending the day in Massachusetts at my parents' house with my mother, father, grandmother and great-aunt. I spent every Christmas with them, but that year I was especially aware that we would not always be together, so I slipped a tape recorder under the living-room sofa to capture the flavor of our family's holiday.

Today, I listened to the tape for the first time in years.

The conversations I heard were so utterly ordinary -- Aunt Edith talking about chapped lips, my mother asking what Christmas tapes the family wanted to hear ("Robert Shaw Chorale, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Mitch Miller, Philadelphia Orchestra, Bing Crosby, or Robert Shaw Chorale?"). Gramma asked, "Do you have a list of what they sing?" Aunt Edith deferred to my mother: "You play what you like!" The topic moved on to me asking what 'cloisonne' was and how was it spelled? They all leaped in; Aunt Edith pronounced it, Gramma started to spell it, Aunt Edith finished, and my mother grabbed a dictionary and read me the definition. Shortly after that, my father came in and joined the group. At one point, I heard what was probably wrapping paper being torn away.

Meanwhile, the carols spilled out into the room: "O Come, All Ye Faithful," "The First Noel," "O Little Town of Bethlehem," "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," "Away In a Manger."

So ordinary -- yet so miraculous that these moments survive. I doubt that anyone else has a recording of Gramma's voice -- low, shrewd, wry -- or Aunt Edith's, light, precise, sociable, and with a more distinct Boston accent than I remembered ("I cahn't tell..."). And everyone's laughter was wonderful to hear once more.

I thought about how the day always started with going to pick up Gramma and Aunt Edith in Boston, and loading into the car their shopping bags full of presents. One Christmas that lives on in memory is the bitterly cold day that my father’s car got a flat tire on Route 9, and we rolled into a fire station where he changed the tire while the rest of us kept warm inside the station. To this day when I am visiting the area, I drive past “our” fire station and smile.

Christmas at our house had the following ingredients: Music (carols all day on the stereo), presents (often books and music, opened one at a time, with everyone watching), women chatting (about photography, knitting, travel, etc.), and tasty treats of salted cashews and candy -- "peach blossoms" (peanut butter in a crunchy shell) and "chicken bones" (hard candies with a chocolate center), as well as gift boxes of chocolates and Brigham's fudge to pass around. There was even the time (times?) when we gathered in the evening around my father's TRS-80 computer and tried to get Gramma to play Shooting Gallery ("Oh no, I don't want to shoot those cute little ducks!").

All these years later, I am grateful for my little cassette of memories, despite the scratchy sound quality. Aunt Edith died in 1995, then Gramma in 1999. My parents are still in their house, but may be moving to a smaller place before next Christmas. I am now in Pennsylvania, married with a 15-year-old son. So many changes.

But I can -- and do -- still play Bing Crosby and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at Christmas, and put out salted cashews and Gramma's silver candy dish, filled with chocolate kisses.