Old people stories are the best!

[tavernier]

I'm a home health nurse and have collected stories from seniors for years. They have the best anecdotes and memories, making me wonder sometimes if we haven't lost big chunks of our history simply because very few ppl want to listen.

About twenty five years I had a patient who was the first college educated teacher in Key West. The city paid for her ferry and train travel to Tallahassee in exchange for her commitment to teach Keys children. She was over 100 at the time she told me her stories.

She reminisced about her toddler days, her dad carrying her to the outhouse at night, holding a torch over the seat of the "shitter." I asked if that was because the seat was soiled and she answered with a great cackling laugh... "No! Scorpions!"

I'm curious if anyone else has saved any great memories from those generations that are now just names marked on a tombstone.

[Hoyt]

1. My grandmother used to tell great stories of living on

a rural Georgia farm during the Depression. We'd sit on the old porch just off a dirt road and listen for hours. Some of them were scary, some made you wonder how they made it. My grandad told great stories too, including WW1 where he drove a truck in Germany.

And when I was little, they still had an outhouse. Thank golly for toilets.

I bet you have a bunch of great ones.

[tavernier]

3. Shoot, I hit the wrong one

But thanks!!

[tavernier]

2. On New Year's Eve

My girlfriend and I used to stay home with my grandparents while the folks went to parties. This was in the early fifties.

Grandma would melt zinc in a pot and pour it into cold water. Then she would read our fortunes from the scraps, lol!

My friend had a horn that we would blow at midnight. It was a horn her dad treasured from his childhood in Kentucky, as they used to blow it from mountain to mountain top. She was only allowed to use it one night a year.

Thanks for your memory, Hoyt!!

[No Vested Interest]

4. I hope the teacher passed her stories along to her family

as well.
You're right, these stories are treasure troves.
I'm bginning to have a few myself, that I impart to family when we're on long road trips.
I tell them about their grandparents and further back - that which I know and will be lost if I'd recollect to them.

My own begin mostly in the 40's, hearing my Dad come home on a sunday afternoon and telling my Mom and me -"The Japs have just bombed Pearl Harbor."

About school days when we learned to write with ink in an inkwell in the upper right hand corner of our desk.
We were given new nibs for our stick-type pens and dipped it into the inkwell and practiced writing our letters and words.
When finished we wiped the nib clean with a small piece of cloth.

And seeing television for the first time in the local hardware store, where a few folding chairs had been set up in front of the television.
You had to come at a certain time, because there were broadcasts for only a few hours a day at first.
Dumont was one of the early networks. Etc, etc.

[tavernier]

5. I'm not far from your memories myself!

I also remember watching TV at neighbor's house when Queen Elizabeth was crowned. I also remember sending in (with box tops) for a a vinyl sheet that would make my tv 'In Color!' It had three horizontal stripes of red, blue and green to slap onto the screen. 😄

I guess the most poignant memories I have here in the Keys are of the families who lived through the early hurricanes, especially the one that wiped out the Flagler railroad. The oldest brother told me that he climbed a telegraph pole, the water reaching above his nose before it finally subsided. Another resident (now long gone) still cried as he remembered taking bodies out of the Mangrove branches.

[monmouth3]

62. Many of those bodies were brought here to West Palm Beach and buried. The cemetary had been long

neglected but a few years ago, the black community got together and gave these poor souls a proper burial. That hurricane was a killer..

[Rowdyboy]

6. In 1921 my grandfather, then 20 and a new father, lost his job....He didn't come home that night

No word, no notice, he just vanished. My grandmother moved back in with her family who ran a small restaurant in their hometown in Mississippi. About a year later he showed up with enough money for a start and reclaimed his family. He never told anyone where he had been or where the money came from. Twelve years later my mom was born.

Fast forward 55 years. I've just graduated from college and he and I are sitting around having a whiskey and coke when he told me the story. He said he had been fired, was broke and knew he couldn't provide (the Great Depression hit Mississippi hard and early around 1920). He was too ashamed to go home and he knew that my grandmothers' family would take care of them so he hopped on a train car and took off. He picked fruit and tomatoes in the south, oranges in Florida, harvested wheat and corn in the Midwest and worked on cattle ranches out west, saving every penny he made until he had what he considered to be enough for a new stake.

He eventually landed a job at home with Masonite, became an electrician and raised 4 girls with my grandmother. He had a good life and died shortly after telling me the story. Years later when my mom was dying, she wondered aloud where he had been during the missing year and I told her the story. She cried then and I have tears in my eyes now just thinking about his life, his desperation and his love.

[tavernier]

8. Wow! Just... Wow!

How awesome to hear this, and how kind of you to share it!

I hope you don't mind if I pass it on.

[Rowdyboy]

10. Please feel free to pass his story on. He was a wonderful man and I loved him more than my own

father. He was also a part-time farmer (his entire back yard was a garden) and a yellow dog Democrat. Only given a first name as a child, when he was a teenaged he adopted "Wilson" as his middle name in honor of Woodrow Wilson. He was the oldest of nine surviving children and lost his own father when he was 15, and the family home a few years later.

[tavernier]

11. You made him live again.

I enjoyed his story. Thanks!

[Jenoch]

50. What an interesting family story.

If you have never written that story, with all the detail you can remember hearing from your grandfather, please do it soon, for the sake of preserving the family lore.

I never got to really know my grandfathers. One lived 200 miles away and died when I was 6-years old. The other lived 280 miles away and died when I was 11-years old.

I tell my kids and my nephews how lucky they are to have been able to spend so much time with my dad.

We bought some recreational hunting land with an old shack on it about 15 years ago and that is where the boys have spent a lot of time with their grandfather.

My dad likes to say he has 12 grandchildren, all but 11 of them are girls. (I have a 40 year old niece, she's more like a little sister since her mother was 15 years old when I was born.)

[Arugula Latte]

7. My dad used to tell the story of the day WWII ended

He was a young guy in San Francisco, which was celebrating the end of the war in fine fashion, as you can imagine. A woman was standing in the middle of Union Square, stark naked. Boy did that make an impression on my dad!

[tavernier]

9. And they think Madonna and Miley are racy??

I bet there were a lot of ladies sans undies when the troops came marching home!

[lululu]

13. even then there were women in the armed services

[csziggy]

64. My Dad told the story of how WWII effectively began from his perspective

He was in the Boy Scouts in Florida. The senator or congressman for the area arranged for the boys to ride on a National Guard ship to New York for an "outing." They took a train to Jacksonville, then When the ship arrived just off NYC it was stopped so it held offshore.

As they waited, a large ocean liner emerged from the mouth of the harbor escorted by a number of Navy vessels. The US Navy vessels escorted the liner out of the port.

It was September 1939 and Germany had just invaded Poland, France and Britain had declared war and an ally of those nations, the German liner had been called back to join Germany's war effort.

Dad told me the name of the German liner - it may have been the SMS Bremen:

On 26 August 1939, in anticipation of the invasion of Poland, the Kriegsmarine high command ordered all German merchant ships to head to German ports immediately. Bremen was on a westbound crossing and 2 days from New York when she received the order. Bremen’s captain decided to continue to New York to disembark her 1770 passengers. She left New York without passengers on 30 August 1939 and on 1 September, coincident with the start of the Second World War, she was ordered to make for the Russian port of Murmansk. Underway, her crew painted the ship grey for camouflage. She made use of bad weather and high speed to avoid Royal Navy cruisers, arriving in Murmansk on 6 September 1939.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Bremen_%281929%29#World_War_II

In December 1941, Dad was in his first semester of engineering school. After the 7th, he tried to enlist and the recruiter told him to stay in school and enlisted in Navy ROTC. He did finish that year but enlisted in 1943. He was sent to the Bureau of Ordnance, Research and Development Section in Washington, D. C. Dad: "They assigned each of us to an engineer or a pair of them. I was assigned to the pair that had made the original design for the 5” 38 and the 6” 47."

He was then sent to midshipman school at Columbia, then to submarine school, was assigned to a submarine, and sent to the Pacific where he did three war time patrols. He met Mom just after the war - she was a Navy Nurse but mostly took care of Marines.

[frogmarch]

12. I was about a year old when

my two-and-a-half-year-old sister and I left India and came to America on a U.S. troop transport ship in the fall of 1944. The voyage took several months because the ship maintained a zigzag course to avoid enemy action, and we didn’t arrive in the US until January 1945. En route our ship was torpedoed, and I remember being awakened by sirens blowing and people yelling. The ARC worker who took care of my sister and me and who would later become our mom (our birth mother had died in India) carried me to the deck while holding my sister’s hand. Mom had tied my sister to her with belts made into a leash so she wouldn’t lose her in the chaos.

In the foggy grey of early morning, lifeboats were lowered into the water and we stood waiting our turn to board one. Even though I was a baby, I remember Mom saying we might have to go swimming, and me thinking I didn’t want to. In my mind I can still see the churning dark water as I looked down through the mist and fog. The sub that had torpedoed us was destroyed and our ship wasn’t lost.

I’d always remembered the incident, but I didn’t think to mention it until I was about 12 and my sister and I were in the living room talking about our earliest memories. Mom was in the kitchen, and when she heard me talk about my memory she came into the living room and said, “Who told you about that?” I said that no one had, that it was a memory, but I didn’t know of what. She told me it was impossible for me to have remembered it, because I wasn’t even a year old when it happened. When I described my memory in more detail, she finally believed me and explained what it was all about.

[Rowdyboy]

14. What an amazing story...

I can understand why they were considered "the Greatest Generation".

[frogmarch]

15. Yes. Indeed they were.

Here's a picture of us in India, on the way to the ship.

[Rowdyboy]

16. Thats quite a shot. Thanks for sharing both it and your story.

I love first hand accounts of how it was and have heard some incredible stories over the years.

[tavernier]

19. Amazing!

I'm techno challenged, so I can't show you the picture of me in pigtails and a beret, looking at the Statue of Liberty.

Please tell us more about your follow up years! You can't leave us hanging!!

[tavernier]

17. I came across from Europe in 46

Our crossing was non eventful compared to yours, but it it was wasn't pleasant as the voyage was rocky and all aboard were sea sick, except for me, age 4. I remember the whales, when mom felt good enough to take me on deck. And I remember the Statue of Liberty.

This is the first I've heard about immigrants from a continent other than Europe from those days. This wasn't what I expected when I started this thread, but I'm touched by your story.

[frogmarch]

18. How interesting! I wish I'd

been older so I could remember more of our voyage. It's wonderful that you remember yours - and that you saw whales!

[tavernier]

22. Actually I was born in 46

And crossed in 50. Mom said everyone but the Cook and I was seasick! I demanded breakfast every day!

I cried in NYC when our ship departed. That might be why I chose to live on a boat for 15 years in the Florida Keys!

[frogmarch]

29. Ohhh, you cried when

the ship left without you. Really, that very well could be why you decided to live on a boat for all those years!

Mom told me that on our crossing, she and I were seasick almost the whole time. I guess you were lucky. While everyone else was upchucking, you were probably blissfully watching the whales!

[Skittles]

20. my elderly English mum, seeing German WWII planes on a TV documentary

said, "Those bloody Germans........they woke me up all the time.......noisy buggers they were." When my brother asked if she was talking about them bombing her she looked at him like he was nuts and hissed, "WELL THEY WEREN'T OVER THERE HAVING A BLOODY PARTY, WERE THEY?"

[tavernier]

24. ...

[lovemydog]

60. haha!

So many great stories in this thread.

[Divernan]

21. My grandfather was president of a small town bank during the '29 stock market crash.

The bank folded, of course, but he personally paid back every penny to every depositor - although it took him more than 30 years to do it, and although he was under no legal obligation to do so. He was a kind and honorable man, and a lifelong Democrat (the old-fashioned kind, not a corporate sellout). A real life George Bailey (It's A Wonderful Life). My other grandfather was a coal miner who battled the Pinkertons to unionize. He is buried in the same cemetary (Mt. Olive, Illinois) as Mother Jones.

On edit: Just recalled re my coal miner grandfather, in his spare time/weekends he also was manager for a baseball club in southern Illinois, and was the first manager in his league to have a black player.

[tavernier]

25. God Bless Him!

And you for sharing his story!

What a hero!

[Callalily]

23. These are wonderful stories.

Just can't share mine right now.

[tavernier]

26. I really do understand

Some are tough to share.

[elleng]

27. Dad recalled the ice truck in NYC,

carrying huge chunks of ice around, kids chasing it and trying to carve some ice off. (Dad passed at 98 years of age, in 2012.)

[tavernier]

30. A lovely memory!

I bet it was hot mid summer, and made the day for those kids, and your dad, laughing at their fun! Bet he slowed down the truck.
😄

[elleng]

31. Very hot in NYC summers,

and I can imagine him, his brothers, and their friends doing that, and MAYBE slowing down the truck, which likely was pulled by a horse!

[Jenoch]

52. My dad was a big kid, and faked his birth certificate somehow and got his driver's license

when he was 13. (Back then the driving age in Minnesota was 15. It cost .35¢ with no test of any mind.) He got a job delivering ice to homes and businesses. He got to drive the truck and park it at home. One Saturday he took the truck with a bunch of his friends from the neighborhood and drove to a lake so they could go swimming. This was the summer of '45.

Edit to add: He did not fix the wrong birthdate on his DL until he was about 60.

[monmouth3]

63. Maybe the reason was his upcoming social security. My first husband did the same thing...LOL..n/t

[Jenoch]

65. That's probably why, except that Social Security had his correct birthdate.

[sakabatou]

28. They sometimes have great jokes too

[elleng]

32. HA!

[tavernier]

34. Priceless! n/t

[applegrove]

33. I love the oral tradition and the long stories people from back in the day tell.

My grandmother was one of those people who was 30 before the advent of radio in her neck of the woods. I loved her meandering tales of life in the country.

[tavernier]

35. Well...

Meander a tale for us!

[applegrove]

36. I can't tell a story. I can't. Plus I can't remember much. She stopped telling them

Last edited Fri Apr 25, 2014, 09:59 PM - Edit history (1)

before I was ten. Now I run across people originally from other countries that still have that gift. And it resonates.

[elleng]

37. Grandpa, whom I never met,

ran a delicatessen on Amsterdam Avenue in NYC, where he raised Dad (the baby, born in 1913,) 3 more sons and one daughter, after Grandma passed in the Great Flu Epidemic, http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/influenza-epidemic/

The 'kids' helped to work in the shop, above which they all lived, and Grandpa did the cooking. Aunt Dot apparently picked up some of his recipes. Dad loved the cabbage soup, and brought the recipe with him when he grew up. They all played cards together, after dinner.

Dad HATED pickles as an adult, probably beginning in his youth, because he had to fish pickles out of the pickle barrel, smelling like a pickle, and if he was going out on a date after pickle-fishing, he'd have to wash and change his shirt!

3 of the 4 boys went to law school in NY.

[tavernier]

40. Made me think of Crossing Delancey

I love that film!!

[elleng]

41. Yes, that's a fun film.

[Jenoch]

38. My 82 year old father is writing some stories down about his family.

I have to get on him about writing more of the stories. He gets overwhelmed about getting a finished product. I've told him to not worry about chronology and I would help him to edit later (I write and edit for a living).

I'll give you an idea about his family. My paternal grandfather was conscripted into the Tsar's army in 1909. He deserted and walked across Europe before getting on board a ship for America. He went through Ellis Island in 1912.

[elleng]

42. Sounds wonderful,

and please publish here first!

[Jenoch]

44. Not all of the family stories are wonderful.

My grandmother emigrated from the same Ukrainian village as my grandfather, in 1922. Her youngest sister was married with 4 children at the end of WWII. Her husband fought as a partisan against the Germans. On the day of Germany's surrender, four local Soviet (Russian) soldiers went to their house and told him he needed to now join the Soviet Army. He protested that he has been fighting for years (the soldiers knew him) and he now needed to stay home with his family. They stepped back, talked amongst themselves and then went back and told him that he should stay with his family. Then they shot him in the head. His 9 year old son and 7 year old daughter dug his grave in the backyard. My father saw the grave when he visited in 1993. Somehow that widow, my great aunt, lived to be 94 years old.

I believe Putin is capable of the same sort of action I have written in this post.

[elleng]

49. Yes, most of the stories around that time are not,

I suspect, 'wonderful,' and putin is capable of all of it.

I don't have stories of my family's emigration, but it was from eastern Europe.

[tavernier]

45. It amazes me how small our world...

My grandfather was sent to Siberia during the time of the Bolsheviks. His son was sent there during WW2, compliments of Stalin. He survived by buying bread rolls for a penny from locals and selling them for 2 pennies to fellow soldiers, but having to walk several miles each day for the trade.

Thousands died, but my uncle survived.

[Jenoch]

46. All of my grandfather's family were murdered by Stalin's Holodomor.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

My grandmother's family were coal miner's so with the exception of that one uncle, they were allowed to live long enough to die of black lung.

[tavernier]

48. And yet they wonder why we

are distrustful of Putin, equally nuts.

[UTUSN]

39. If that is *so* why doesn't anybody like *my* stories?!1 n/t

[grilled onions]

43. This Is The Real History--we should not forget it

Sadly many of today's generation have only used their ears for music. Every day we lose another story. My grandmother, like many years ago, found themselves orphans at a very young age. Other relatives already had a houseful and rarely opted to take on another. She was pushed onto a couple aunts who somehow "made a deal" to ship her several states away where she ended up working in a farm kitchen. She ended up as kitchen help(pies a specialty) and worked her way up to making at least 20 a day. She eventually got married but continued to make pies(only this time for her family). For the rest of her life she made at least one pie a day(usually 2 or 3) when company was coming. Though her kids felt she needed new equipment for her fabulous pies she insisted on using the back of an old cabinet door and used a rolling pin that only had one handle!

[tavernier]

47. 20 pies a day, every day, to survive.

I make two at Thanksgiving and bitch all day about having to peel and slice eight apples!

[pipi_k]

51. And sometimes the best stories

are about them, rather than from them...

Like one of my favorites about Mr Pipi's dad, who died before we met.

Coming of age during the Depression, he developed a thrift-minded attitude that a lot of people during that time did also.

So one day during the Christmas season he goes to his daughter's house and finds her hubby in the garage trimming off some branches from their large tree before bringing it in the house. Dad asks if he can have the spoils...son-in-law says sure, figuring Dad is going to make a wreath for his and Mom's front door.

Dad did not make a wreath.

He made his own Christmas tree by finding a larger branch, drilling holes in it, and sticking the branches in the holes.

hahahaha

I love that one

[tavernier]

53. Me too.

Did he gather all the Peanuts characters around it and hum 'Hark the Herald'...

[pipi_k]

61. He may have...

I hear he was quite a character

[Jenoch]

54. My dad grew up in NE Minneapolis.

His immigrant parents neverowned a car or had a driver's license (while my dad got a DL at 13.)

My grandmother cleaned offices in downtown Minneapolis from 5p to midnight. My dad a d his brothers were taught to cook at a young age and prepared supper every night.

Years later, my grandmother cleaned houses. I remember hearing that she cleaned the home of a WCCO radio announcer and sportscaster. He did play-by-play for the University of Minnesota football and basketball teams.

Many more years later I had an office in downtown Minneapolis in the WCCO radio building. I ran into that sportscaster, he was in his 70s by now and still doing the play-by-play. I told him he knew my grandmother (she had died about five years earlier). He remembered her fondly. She was quite a character and stood only 4'11". She died on her 86th birthday.

[tavernier]

55. I hope there was something

that made her smile. ❤

[Jenoch]

56. My grandmother became a widow at age 65.

She the buried three live-in boyfriends before she died. She was a bit of a gossip, she would sometimes mutter under her breath in Ukrainian, but she beamed when her grandchildren were at her home. At her funeral my brother mention he never saw her laying down. She was a bundle of energy shortly before she died. She was a lucky woman.

My mother was not in great physical condition the last ten years of her life. My dad was able to keep her at home until three months before she died. She actually died from a norovirus that spread through her nursing home. I was devasted at the time, now I suppose it was her time. She had dementia. It was also costing my father $200 per day for her care. The only thing I ever heard him say about it was that he was glad he could afford it.

(He went a long way from delivering ice at 13. He was a high school dropout. He alao owned his own business for 26 years and retired with enough money to pay $200 a day to care for my mother.)

[Blue_In_AK]

57. My stepmother interviewed my grandparents before their deaths

and gave all of us a transcription. It's really fun to read. They passed away probably 25 years ago now.

I also have a collection of letters that my father's mother wrote when my dad was a child, which would have been in the very early 1920s.

I would like a chance to memorialize some of my own stories before I leave, but I think I've got some time. I've had a pretty adventurous life.

[Divernan]

58. So many great stories about strong, brave, humorous people.

REC the thread, folks - it's inspiring to read and reminds us of people who weren't living their lives to accumulate as much as possible, and had values they didn't sell out to the highest bidder.

[tavernier]

59. How true.

Thanks for summing it all up so nicely.

[flying rabbit]

67. And a kick. nt

[Mister Ed]

66. My great-grandad lived to be 101.

He had many memories of the Great Depression. He once told me how he used to go out at night with an armload of blankets to cover up the jobless and homeless men who were sleeping on the sidewalk outside his place on Washington Street in downtown Chicago. He said the blankets would always be found neatly folded and stacked on his doorstep in the morning.

[many a good man]

68. Love to hear stories about the old days!

My Grandma passed at 103 a few years ago. She was born to a poor immigrant family from Central Europe. She remembers her seeing her baby sister in a shoebox and lain to sleep in a dresser drawer. The houses on the entire block had one big outhouse to share. She was tasked to pick up the garden fertilizer left by the horses in the streets delivering things, like big blocks of ice. Everyone was poor in the neighborhood so young mothers would earn extra money by walking the mile or so to John D. Rockefeller's estate where he would pay them pennies for their mother's milk. As a teenager, her farther bet her twin sister's hand in marriage in a poker game and lost. The next morning the man picked her up and moved to Chicago. She didn't see her twin again until 25 years later.

[laundry_queen]

69. My grandparents all had great stories

They all had long lives and came of age in the 20's and 30's. Lots of stories about the depression. Because of the remote area they lived in, their lived were more like pioneer lives from the late 1800's...they hunted, trapped and grew all their own food. No one had electricity or indoor plumbing or motor vehicles (except for tractors for the farm). A lot of stories about scaring off bears while picking berries or shooing deer away from the gardens.

I think the funniest story was my grandfather describing having a meal at a buddy's house. The buddy was a bachelor - and extremely poor. My grandfather trapped for a living (among other things, he was quite the entrepreneur so not quite as poor) and taught his buddy how to trap. They were both Ukrainian (although this was in the boonies in Canada), and so for dinner, my grandfather was served perogies. So he took a bite - and he said he instantly could tell something was not right. He didn't want to hurt his buddy's feelings though, so he went ahead and swallowed. To hear my grandfather tell it with his Ukrainian accent was hilarious,

"Well, I'll be damned if that goddamned perogy didn't slide right back up! So I swallowed it again. And back up it came. And back down and up it went 50 times at least until I could stand it no longer and I went outside and vomited!"

He asked his friend what in the hell he put in the perogy. His friend replied - it wasn't what he put IN the perogy - it was what he cooked it in. See, they were all out of meat, lard and butter at his house, so when he trapped a skunk that day, he figured the fat should be alright to fry the perogies in.

He thought it tasted just fine, LOL. My grandfather said he couldn't eat perogies for a month.

Another good story was from my grandmother (on the other side). She had many responsibilities and she found once she started having babies, she couldn't get her work done. She was very driven to make sure there was enough food for the family - she had a HUGE garden, they had cows - she milked them all. She gathered the eggs, fed the chickens and pigs, she gathered fruit from the fruit trees and spent many hours picking berries. Once her 3rd baby was born, she didn't have her mother to help her like with her first 2 so she had to find a way to do the chores with a new baby. She didn't think it was safe to take the baby, she had no where to put her on the barn floor, so she would prop the baby with the bottle in her bassinet and SPRINT to the barn and milk the cows as fast as was humanly possible before she ran back to the house to check on the baby. She couldn't understand why the baby was always crying when she got back and the bottle was always empty. So she would fix another bottle and the baby would finish the entire thing! She said that she couldn't understand why the baby was ALWAYS hungry!

One day, she got to the barn and had to run back to the house before milking because she forgot something - and when she opened the door, there were her 2 toddler boys taking turns drinking the baby's milk! LOL! The boys were supposed to be with their dad, but every day they watched their mom go to the barn and they would sneak in the house and drink the baby's sweetened milk! It was like a treat for them, but the mystery of the hungry baby was solved. My grandmother told me that now you can't leave children like that, and at the time she knew she was taking a chance but she wasn't sure what else to do - it's what you did to survive, she said.

[tavernier]

70. I love that more memories have been added!

As they say, everyone has a story.

Thanks to all who contributed. You can't make up these gems!!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

71. My dad spent his last years writing a family history

that detailed as much as he knew about his father's and mother's families, as far back as he was able to remember or find information about in old albums and letters. He passed away a couple of years ago at nearly 92, and I kind of think he didn't want to go until he got that history done - he was really determined to write everything down. He wrote it on his computer, which he eventually decided was the greatest adventure ever, and I helped him scan and add photographs. Now we have a little book about our family, and I'm so glad he did it.