From Dave Liesse — This one doesn't involve finding a relative, but it does illustrate the "small world" idea quite well! I started working for a new (to me) company in Chicago in the spring of 1994.  My manager was about my age, and his name was Jerry. After the July 4th weekend we were talking about how we'd spent our time.  He told me that he visited his father, just across the state line in Indiana.  The conversation went something like this: D: "Oh, really?  Where in Indiana?" J:  "Oh, a small town you've probably never heard of." D:  "Try me!" J:  "Whiting." D:  "Oh, yeah?  Where in Whiting?" J:  "Well, not really in Whiting.  He's in Hammond, but everybody says Whiting." D:  "Okay, he's in Robertsdale. Go on." (Note: Robertsdale is a part of Hammond, but physically separated from the rest of the city by a couple of oil refineries.  It's served by the Whiting post office, so ...

  Childhood Diseases To follow up on the September 15 post " Power Your Memories, Tell the Stories ", here are some stories that you have sent us about childhood diseases before vaccines were available. Thank you to everybody who shared their memories here.   Polio Stories American Red Cross fundraising campaign featuring Howard Keel--submitted by Karen Harrison Karen Harrison:   My husband Paul is back row 3rd from left being held by a nurse. The hospital was Cabot Kaiser in Santa Monica and they had Howard Keel come and take photos with the children and he signed their 8x10 photos. It was a fundraiser for American Red Cross who paid a good amount of the bills for these poor children. Paul was in the hospital for six months and part of his rehabilitation was swimming in the pool there so he became a good swimmer. MaryLynn --Karen, thank you for this wonderful picture with Howard Keel.  I remember the newsreels at the movies in the late 1940s and early...

Personal Experiences Hurricane David Savannah GA, Sept 4, 1979 Sometimes we are able to live through a disastrous storm and be able to find pleasant memories about it years later. September 4, 1979, Hurricane David made landfall at Savannah, Georgia, after a devastating path through the Caribbean. My husband, son and I were living in there in a row house near the historic downtown area.  My husband was a native of Savannah so he knew how to prepare for the storm. I had grown up in eastern Montana and Wyoming so I had no experience with hurricane storm patterns. Row Houses Early that day, as the rain was already filling the storm drains and causing street flooding several inches deep, we hurried to the grocery store and got chicken and vegetables, other necessary foods and some presto logs to use in our fireplace.  Then it was home again so I could start cooking meals that could be heated in the fireplace. I finished the stove cooking just a few minutes before we lost electrici...

By National Photo Company - Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6992872 Aunt Beulah's Memory "The forest fires were very bad that year.  A number of men’s lives were lost in this part of the country.  In one instance, Papa’s good judgment in using the “back-fire method” (only one other man stood by him in this decision) prevented serious losses in the Blue Creek area."   Beulah Stowe was born on the Stowe farm located on Tubb Hill above Coeur d'Alene Lake May 6, 1910.  In memories collected by her son, Larry Strobel, in 1968, she wrote the paragraph above.  Of course, she was less than four months old when the fires occurred that summer but the devastation and years of recovery certainly made an impact on her life and her family. Beulah Stowe Strobel,  Stowe Memories of Coeur d'Alene  1968 A collection of stories written by Beulah Stowe Strobel and her sister, ...

The recent flooding destruction and tragedy in the hill country of central Texas shows us that people often choose to live close to danger. Closer to home, remember when " Mount St. Helens erupted for nine hours on May 18, 1980 destroying plant and animal life in the surrounding 230 square miles of forest and killing 57 people. In this post-eruption image, Spirit Lake is buried by debris." Famously, Harry Truman refused to leave his home on Spirit Lake, and is presumably buried under the debris shown in the photo below. Mt. St. Helens from  https://catalog.archives.gov/  via Picryl.com Recovery from this utter destruction seemed impossible, but the next photo shows that nature is creative and resilient—and so are we humans.  Aerial photo of Mount St. Helens (center), with Mount Hood (in the distance, far left), Spirit Lake (on left with floating log mat), and St. Helens Lake with a little ice cover (lower left). USGS image taken by K. Spicer on June 6, 2024. Public Domain...

Library at St. Florian Monastery - Goodwill Librarian at Facebook Many, many years ago, in what seems to be another lifetime, I read a little story about books in a library that comes back to haunt me.  The story was in an obscure book or magazine in somebody else's possession, so totally inaccessible. The closest answer to an internet search reveals, The Book of the Elders, Sayings of the Desert Fathers  translated and compiled by John Wortley, 1993; several years after I read the original story.  This book is available on Amazon for over $41, a bit outside my budget. The basic premise of the story was that there was a monastery which had an extensive library, faithfully maintained by the monks. One evening the abbot of the monastery was enjoying the evening air as he walked around the walls when he encountered Satan. In a conversation that followed, Satan boasted of some recent accomplishments in the downfall of men but he also voiced a complaint to the abbot. "As long ...

Image by  Suzanne Morris  from  Pixabay   In Flanders Fields BY   JOHN MCCRAE In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row,      That mark our place; and in the sky     The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,     Loved and were loved, and now we lie,         In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw     The torch; be yours to hold it high.     If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow         In Flanders fields. Human need to honor The need to remember our dead seems to be part of our human psyche. From prehistoric and Viking burial mounds to Egyptian tombs and Roman coffins, from Victorian mausoleums to battleground burials and monuments, humans from the beginning hav...