So, I called my mothers youngest brother and asked him if I could have is "OK" to put his picture on the blog. He said, "Since there aren't any photos of us as children, you can have my permission." Basically. I asked about family photos and he said he didn't have any. My mother only has a small handful of herself as a girl. My uncle told me at one time that he had my grandfathers journal of his life while he was a missionary in the south eastern US in the Thirties.
I asked him if it would be alright for me to drive the four hours to his home on the weekend and take anything he has and scan it at WalMart so that I can share it with the rest of the family?" He said he would get back to me as we would need to stay at his home in order for me to have time to get it done.
He said we could come so I had to convince Princess five that she and her friends could have just as much fun in his town as the one they wanted me to take them to shopping. She asked her friends and since I said if they went to this town, I would cover all the gas and they could have a sleep over, the was a unanimous "YES" to going.I had to ask Princess Two to come as well so that she could take the girls shopping, swimming etc while I scanned at the store so she said she would come "babysit" the girls for me.
When we arrived in his town, we went right to our temple and did service there.
After that, we got pizza and went to my Uncles home. He and his wife were wonderful to host us. The girls went swimming and did the hot tub and then went to the theater room and watched a few new movies.
My Uncle said he had no pictures but then pulled out several photo albums and there were lots more than he realized. Then, he said he was "done" and went out to visit with the girls. I guess when he came back in, his wife reminded him of a few boxes he had in the garage and he said I could go through them. When I got to the bottom of the box, the last two things were so amazing to me. One was an envelope of all my grandparents important papers as in "Graduation certificates" etc. The dates and history there was wonderful. Then there was a file with news article of my grandfathers career in the law and politics. It was also wonderful stuff.
At the bottom, there was a file with all sorts of news articles about my mother in all sorts of beauty contests from about age 13 up. There were at least 1/3 of the article that I hadn't seen and I have seen lots. I think what happened was that because my mother was so young at the time, she didn't think to keep those articles on her own so my grandmother did. Once my mother was an adult and in the bigger contests, she started keeping her own articles and much of that has been lost over the years with moves and 8 children in tow.
I started crying. I thought it was so sweet that my grandmother kept all those and that my uncle moved them so many times since my grandmothers death several years ago.
The very last thing I found was a poem that my grandmother wrote to my grandfather when he passed the bar. I was almost sobbing by this point. It was so sweet. They weren't married yet and I thought it was a precious find. I don't know if I hadn't gone what would have happened to that box of stuff. My guess is that my uncles kids would have figured that we probably had plenty of copies of those articles and thrown them out.
My sister reminded me that we were in my uncles wedding as princesses with the pointed hats and everything so to ask him about 8mm movies. I remember seeing those movies at some point in my life but he looked and looked and couldn't find them. He told me as he was leaving Saturday morning that I could look in his movie area. I found an 8mm reel that my grandmother had in her stuff of my mother as a beauty queen. I haven't been able to watch the reel yet as my bulb on my projector is gone but I can't wait to get that transferred over and watch it. I still have hope that he will be able to find the wedding movies for us to add to the collection.On Saturday, I had Princess 2 help me some with scanning at first. The one Walmart in town had all their scanners down so we had to go to the other store a bit further away and she stayed until lunch giving me a chance for a potty break as you can't leave the scanners once you start scanning. I was there from 11 a.m. until 9:30 p.m.on my feet using two scanners and I just finished what we found in that time. I scanned about 1500 scans which included my grandfathers journal and all the documents, new articles and pictures he could find relating to anyone in the family.
I rushed back to the house once Princess 2 picked me up and as I was loading the girls up to head home, my uncle pulled out some audio tapes from my grandmothers house. One had "Grandpa's pig story" written on it. I have a tape deck in the car and on the way home, I got to listen to my grandfather tell his life story. It was WONDERFUL! He told how his mother had 8 children and lost 3. I cried to hear the emotion in his voice as he explained how his sweet sister died giving birth as well as the baby. He shared how sweet the other babies were that died and how he worked and worked to get through law school eating mostly cheese and crackers.
We arrived home at 1 a.m. and I felt bad getting her friends home so late but had no idea that he would have so many treasures to share. He didn't know either! I was able to get it all copied and will distribute copies to everyone at the reunion planned in a few weeks.
I called my mothers sister and guess what? She had my grandmothers photo album of her growing up and one of my grandfathers that had about 13 pictures in it. She was willing to let me take it and scan what she has. They dropped it off to Princess one as they live near each other. This weekend, I scanned for four hours some documents and obituaries of my Grandfather as well as those two albums. Since the pictures were on the pages and the pages had writing, it was time consuming for me to save each picture individually as well as saving copies of each page to know who was in the pictures. It will be worth it to have that information however.
I am so grateful they allowed me to gather that information. It seems like I am the "gatherer" in my family. Gathering information from the tapes, aunts, uncles and my mother and then piecing them together. It was weird how one had some of the articles and one had the certificates and one had the pictures and tapes. I have learned who my grandfather was this weekend in a different light than I remember him. I saw him as a boy and man and student and father. It was a WONDERFUL few weekends and I am sure I will be gathering a bit more as I want to go and finish going through the box I saved from my mothers stuff for her side of the family. I am hoping to get to that before the reunion so I can add it to the group of items I want to share with everyone. What an amazing family I have!
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