I’ve been to Germany with her a half dozen times. After I went to college she was going every year. Sometimes twice.

The entries in her journal during the war were handwritten in the fraktur style and difficult for me to ride or translate. I managed enough to figure out what happened but I didn’t feel comfortable reading more of those private entries. Sadly that ornate leather journal has disappeared. I had it in my office at Penn State and it “walked off.” As a philosopher stated, “Oh well…”

You don’t see those big families much anymore. I can’t think of a single family now of that size. I’m sure they’re out there but they’re strangers to me.

A book for some future work after the others I have in mind. First up with be that Scooter in the Sticks book.

From my vantage point at 62, I feel as if I wasted a lot of time compared to what my mother and father accomplished. It’s really hard to know for sure how they felt about their lot in life. But whatever drove them along is probably at work in me somewhere.

My mother was a maverick. Not politically or anything like that. But in terms of a woman’s role in society, she was not going to be enslaved to anything she didn’t want to do. If she had a different husband things might have been different. Hard to say. But my father was the perfect partner for someone like her. It must have been his poor, hard-scrabble upbringing in the panhandle of West Virginia.

It’s sad to miss the chance to know history — family or otherwise. My mother’s sister lived 20 years longer and I squandered the chance to ask more. We did talk some but it was minimal. So the idea of just writing things down takes the lack of questioning out of the picture. I want to share the little piece of history I have.

I was fortunate to have been able to make many trips to Germany with my mother and see what was important. I always wanted to take my daughter but the opportunity never presented itself. So writing may be my only option now…

thank you.

Bill,

As an only child my family is small. I do want my granddaughter to one day have some insight to part of her past. Those stories of life in the 1930s forward are unusual from our perspective today.

Thanks for taking the time to comment. I appreciate your thoughts.

That’s the plan.