Meet my paternal grandma, Rosemary Kooken White, pictured here as a toddler in the late 1920s. Rosemary had a Valentine’s birthday. She was the youngest of four, the little sister of two brothers and a sister. Her mother passed away when she was very young and her brothers stayed with their father. So Rosemary and […]
Winter Wonderland, worthy of family memories! Thanks to my sis Janis for this one. That’s her on the left, and I’m the little one in the sled. When we cleaned out our mom’s house, I brought home this very same antique red sled, and it held pots of mom’s geraniums at my shop all this […]
Ten years go by so fast. Your grandson is now nine and your granddaughter will be six at the end of the month. One of the biggest tragedies of my life has been the fact that you never had the opportunity to meet each other. This photo was taken with a Polaroid Pronto in 1977 […]
I’m about to embark on a huge, long journey and all I can think of is my grandparents. My grandpa had an amazing military career and was a great man, but today all I can think about is that everywhere he went, all over the world, he did handstands. I mean, he walked miles on […]
I am the adult child of divorced parents, and the fact that I come from a broken family is a pretty good metaphor for our family photo archives. My dad had some, my mom had some, I had some, and my sisters had some. They were in albums, boxes, envelopes, and there were even handfuls […]
I have a special fondness for my mother who had, and still has, a special fondness for her grandmother, Ona Minerva Harding. I have always been mesmerized by history and especially my own family’s. We are all, I believe, just a part of those people and stories. I can see the love of my ancestors […]
I never understood why when someone died they were referred to as being late, the late Mrs. X, or the late Mr. Y. It’s a peculiar thing to me to call someone who’s passed away as being ‘late’ when almost always they’re gone much too early. Death and the passing of a person is such […]
My grandpa and me when I was about two years old. This is how I always remember him–striped overalls, horn-rimmed glasses, and his rocking chair on the porch. My love for books began early, and I begged anyone who would to read to me. Grandpa was a slow, halting reader who often stumbled over the […]
I’ve been thinking lots about my paternal grandmother lately as I’ve been pondering next steps for my life and vocation. Formidable and unflappable, the only daughter among nine children, she was unusually well educated for a woman of her class and station. She was a mother of six, only five of whom lived past childhood. A […]
A year ago, I knew very little about my ancestors. My grandparents passed when I was very young and there wasn’t much storytelling in our house growing up. I knew a little about genealogy and that some had been done in our family, but I never asked about it. I ask now. I ask a […]
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