Genealogy and a family trip have made the sacrifices of members of the military and their families more real for me. I was tasked from the prompt at the end of this essay to write about how finding out something about an ancestor had changed how I view that ancestor. I’m deviating from the script… Continue reading Walking a Mile in My Ancestors’ Combat Boots
When your birthplace is designated a superfund site, you truly can’t go home again. If you ask my father where he comes from, he would say Joplin, Missouri. He lived there from a relatively young age, graduating from Joplin High School. Sometime after he graduated, my grandparents moved to Lawrence, Kansas. I remember visiting them… Continue reading Picher: “America’s Most Toxic Town”
My granduncle's car saw the country, well after his death. Tasked with writing about something "long-lasting" with regard to my ancestors, I thought that I had a compelling subject. In researching the essay, however, I discovered that the story I remembered was not the real story. My granduncle James Williamson (1912-1981) died when I was… Continue reading A Three-Generation “Hand Me Down”
