Memories – Page 2 – It's All About Family

Mental Health

The topic for Week 36 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is “We Don’t Talk About It”.

My grandfather, Konrad Posluszny, committed suicide in the early morning of December 28, 1944. He was a night janitor at the Wallingford Steel Mill, where he had access to the offices and storerooms and that is where he got the gun he used. It was written up in the afternoon Meriden Daily Journal on the 28th, and then the next day, the morning paper, the Meriden Record, had a much more dramatic telling of the tragedy.

Years after it happened, my Aunt Tootsie told me “a gypsy told my father he was going to die by a gun and so he didn’t allow them in our home”.

As the second article mentions, he might have been “brooding over the dangers that might befall his son” my Uncle Connie who was assigned to duty in New Guinea. My uncle was a cook in the Army but I never found any records for him in the Fold3 website. My Aunt Judy did talk about him having to “pack up the kitchen” when they were being relocated.

*Julianna (Gram), Connie, Konrad (Gramp*) *1943 or 1944*

Would he have committed suicide because he was worried about his son? Not likely, unless there were mental health issues to begin with.

Which brings me to something else my Aunt Tootsie told me in one of our conversations. She said “when he was in the hospital”, the doctor allowed him to have beer because “he needed it”. Crazy right? It makes me think he was maybe in a hospital for mental health issues. This post from conversations with my Aunt Judy and my cousin Judy, talks about my grandfather and grandmother relationship.

*Konrad with his daughter Julia in 1937*

Another piece of the puzzle comes from my first experience with a medium in 2013. I realize a lot of people don’t believe in mediums or what they say, but hey, my grandfather believed what the Gypsy said! This medium said my grandfather committed suicide, was there with my mother, he later mentioned the gun shot and the depression he suffered from all his life. If you’re interested you can go to YouTube, search for CT Buzz and the look for Medium and Life Guide Phil Quinn. It’s 7:40 long and you might recognize a younger me in the screenshot. During either this reading or another, Phil told me that my grandfather suffered from profound depression and he didn’t have a joyful day in his life.

That makes me think about how he started out as a hatter, ended up with a hat company of his own, he had a patent for a cleaning solution for straw hats, but died as a janitor at a steel mill. I told the story about the family profession here. I feel such sadness for him to have had so much and then nothing. Was it because of this depression that caused my aunt to say her mother had more balls than her father?

Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only person in the family suffering from mental illness…

My great-uncle Frank Posluszny, spent at least 10 years in the Essex County Hospital (for the Insane) in Cedar Grove, New Jersey. The 1910 and 1920 censuses, show his occupation as a Hatter. However, by the April 27, 1930 census, he was an inmate at the hospital and was there again in the 1940 census. A section in this census asks if this is the same residence as 1935, and the response for Frank is “same residence”. I have not been able to find any death record for Frank but it might be safe to say he spent the rest of his years at the county hospital. He and his wife had three children.

Frank and Josephine Posluszny wedding photo. Brother Charles back left, step father Jon Bonk, back third from left, mother Caroline seated left, sister Mary seated right — *Frank and Josephine’s wedding photo. His brother Charles is top left, stepfather Jon 3rd from left, mother Caroline seated left, and sister Mary seated right*

My great-aunt Elizabeth Posluszny Laçz, left her husband and two children behind and disappeared in 1923 or 1924. Her sister Mary, hired a private detective but he never found her. She came up in a medium reading I had years ago and I was told she had a complete breakdown and created an entirely new life. I have never found records of her or her children but I wonder if there is a trace of them among any of my DNA matches.

The Posluszny Family. Elizabeth is bottom right, next to her mother. She is approximately 9 years old. — *Posluszny family photo – Frank 2nd from left in back, Konrad back far right, Elizabeth front right seated*

I never had a conversation with my mother about the death of her father. She was 22 when it happened and I can’t imagine how they felt getting that knock on their door that morning. All I knew as I was growing up was that he died a long time ago.

Today we are all better educated about mental health and we are able to express how we are feeling either to each other or a therapist. A little part of me knows that the DNA we got from our dad’s side of the family evened us all out!

Red Men and Pocahontas

The topic for week 34 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is Member of The Club. I looked at that and thought SWEET! It was a subject I wanted to share.

The Improved Order of Red Men is a national fraternal organization that goes back to 1765 and was one of several patriotic societies founded before the American Revolution. Other groups included The Sons of Liberty and the Sons of St. Tammany. Originally known as Red Men, the members concealed their identities and worked “underground” to help establish freedom and liberty in the early Colonies. After the War of 1812, the name was changed to the Society of Red Men and in 1834 to the Improved Order of Red Men. In Baltimore, Maryland in 1847, the various tribes came together and formed a national organization called the Grand Council of the United States. With the formation of a national organization, the Improved Order of Red Men spread, and within 30 years there were State Great Councils in 21 states with a membership of over 150,000. The order continued to grow and by the mid-1920s there were tribes in 46 states and territories with a membership totalling over one-half million.

The organization believes in:
*Love and Respect for the American Flag
*The American Way of Life
*Keeping alive the customs and legends of a once-vanishing race
*Creating and inspiring a greater love for the United States of America
*Linking our members together in a common bond of Friendship and Love
*Helping those in need with organized charitable programs

The Women’s Auxiliary of the Improved Order of Red Men was The Degree of Pocahontas. It was believed that Pocahontas’ brief life presented a touching and beautiful picture of grace, beauty, and virtue, as well as “constant friendship to the palefaces.” The group patterned itself after the virtues of the original Pocahontas, those virtues of teaching kindness, love, charity, and loyalty to one’s nation. (information from the official website http://www.redmen.org)

The first “tribe” in Connecticut was the Hammanssett No. 1 tribe in New Haven established in 1880. Within 50 years, there were 38 additional tribes of seven thousand members along with the Degree of Pocahontas with several thousand members of its own. The Wallingford men’s tribe was Owenoco and the local women’s tribe Cheyenne Council No. 20.

Notable Connecticut men involved in the group included three Connecticut governors – Raymond Baldwin, Marcus Holcomb, and John Trumbull.

My Aunt Tootsie became involved with this organization in the early 1940s and was very active in it for over 40 years. Until I saw the article below, I didn’t know another aunt, Florence Jakiela, was also part of the group, so that was an interesting find!

In addition to meetings, the Red Men and Pocahontas groups held fundraisers and presentations such as this one from 1955. (Notice the ad about Caplan’s being closed for George Washington’s birthday!)

Tootsie met her first husband Lester Schmitt through the Red Men organization. Lester is 2nd from left in the photo below and I thought he looked a little like Bob Hope in one of his movies. They dated for many years before they married as he lived with and cared for his mother in Torrington and she did the same for my grandmother in Wallingford.

Years after Lester passed away, she married her second husband in 1978. He and his first wife were friends with Tootsie and Lester through the Red Men organization.

It was in the late 1960s that the Degree of Pocahontas decided to create a girls’ group, Silver Cloud Council. It was made up of nieces, granddaughters, and neighborhood friends of the Pocahontas members, and we met one Friday night a month. My mother was likely happy to have us out of the house for that one Friday night!

The Red Men building was located at 50 South Whittlesey Avenue in Wallingford and, at the time, it was incredibly dark and scary. Our meetings were on the second floor and they were very ceremonious. We had to be reminded of the process at every meeting. The parts of those evenings I remember the most were:
1) wanting to watch The Brady Bunch and Partridge Family (no DVR back then!), being annoyed that we couldn’t, and trying to get it tuned in on an old television set there;
2) running around the building with the other girls; creeping up the stairway to the cupola at the top of the building; and
3) sneaking down the basement stairs to peek at the organization’s bar!

In addition to meetings, we marched in parades including our town’s Tercentenary (300 years) parade in 1970. We definitely weren’t thrilled about that!

My sisters and I moved on from the group after 2 years at the most and I don’t have any memories of Aunt Tootsie participating after that. Two of the ladies in the group passed away in 1973 so that would have definitely shrunk the local Pocahontas council.

The Improved Order of Red Men tribe in Wallingford disbanded and the building was sold and now houses a law firm. There are still active tribes in Connecticut and 126 tribes throughout the United States.

My Favorite Discovery

The Week 33 topic for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is – My Favorite Discovery. I’ve had a few discoveries over the last 25 years. My favorite discovery has a good side / not-so-good side, but it makes me happy.

The road to this discovery started in 2004, when my cousin Judy Posluszny Behme passed away and her husband brought me all her ancestry paperwork. She and I were working parallel, we didn’t share information or ask questions about what we had. I knew she was also working on it, but not much more!

The papers included email correspondence from someone named Joanne. Judy had sent a letter to Anna Engram, Joanne’s mother. I don’t know whether the letter was ancestry-related or just perhaps a Christmas card to Aunt Tootsie’s list of people. Who knows how long it had been since cards had been sent out but it was a smart idea to use the list for information too!

emails from 2/7/2001, 2/25/2001, and 11/18/2004

The top 2 emails are from Joanne to Judy in February 2001, 2 weeks apart, and the bottom one is my email to Joanne in November of 2004.

Joanne responded right away. She still didn’t know who she visited as a young girl but recalled a wedding in Wallingford “of a woman relative who was marrying at ‘mid-age'” and “this may have been a cousin? to my Dad”.

Through our emails, she told me about her father, Jacob Engram Jr., and his father, Jacob, who immigrated from Austria-Hungary and was a farmer. While growing up her father lived in the vicinity of today’s Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, and later on a rented farm in the Pelham Bay area. I knew there was some family connection because my grandmother loved her flowers and tending to her gardens.

My Aunt Judy helped put some pieces together in a phone conversation in November 2004. According to Judy, Uncle Jack Ingram had a farm “in Long Island”, and her parents would go there from Yonkers and help out. Uncle Jack had a son, Jack, who was in World War I and Aunt Judy remembered her mother kept up her Christmas tree until February, when “her nephew” Jack came home. The dates don’t add up but it’s interesting how that story got passed down. Jack served overseas during World War I from July 18, 1918, to July 13, 1919.

We continued our correspondence through the remainder of the year and determined that she attended my parent’s wedding on November 9, 1952. 72 years ago today! Joanne was only 7 years old so an older bride and a partially bald groom would be considered “mid-aged” in her eyes!

We emailed back and forth a few times and then didn’t talk again until 2016 and again in 2018. Life is like that sometimes!

And then, her kids gave her a DNA kit for Christmas in 2018. In March of 2019, we confirmed we were related. Oh boy, were we related! We were so much related that she and I shared twice the cMs compared to me and my first cousins. It also explained why some DNA matches were only between us and not between my maternal cousins.

I went to the experts – the Ancestry DNA Facebook group. My question “Why do I share 1,040 cMs with this person and only 527 and 467 with my first cousins” was met with “You need to talk to your mother”. Since my mother had been gone for 32 years by 2019, I answered my own question.

Joanne was my half aunt and her father, Jacob Engram, Jr., was also my mother’s father.

Shocked is putting it mildly.

My initial reactions were: 1) The work I’ve done on the Posluszny and Straub side was all for nothing!, 2) All the DNA matches associated with the last name “Duy” made sense because that was Jacob’s mother’s maiden name and, 3) not only were Julianna and Konrad Posluszny related (3rd cousins perhaps), but geez, Julianna and Jacob were related as well!

If there was any question of being related, I have the photographic proof:

That would probably be the bad side of the discovery because it did shake me up a bit.

I’m fascinated by the timing because my grandmother and family were living in New Britain in 1921 when she would have become pregnant. Did she know? Did she tell him her suspicions? Did their relationship continue after my mother was born? This is where I’d love to be a time traveler (and I’d have to let it happen again so that I would be assured I exist!).

The good side of the discovery is that I have an aunt! Jacob married in 1934 and had a daughter in 1945. Although she and my mother never knew each other, they did meet and/or knew about each other as a part of the family. Joanne lives in Pennsylvania and we have not met face to face yet. We are Facebook friends and we share any ancestry information we come across.

So this event would definitely qualify as my favorite discovery!

A Look Back at a World Series Game

Last night the New York Yankees kept their World Series hopes alive by beating the Los Angeles Dodgers 11-4 and bringing the series 3 games (Dodgers) to 1 (Yankees).

My dad was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan and continued to root for them after they took off for Los Angeles after the 1957 season so he’s probably cheering them on from up above!

He did get to see the Yankees win the Series in 1950 when he drove his older brother and his friends down to Yankee Stadium to watch the fourth and final game of the series. I wrote about it in June 2023, The World Series Chauffeur.

I hope you enjoy it and Go Yankees? or Go Dodgers?

The End of the Line….

The week 31 topic for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is End of the Line. This story will not go in the direction you automatically think of when hearing “end of the line”.

If my teacher was putting the class in order of height, “Nancy, you go to the end of the line” would not come out of her mouth ever in 8 years at Holy Trinity School. Only if I was being separated from my sister or friends because I couldn’t stop talking!

My ancestors did NOT bring the height to my family. At the time of their ocean voyages, my grandfather Charles Jakiela, at 17 was 4’9”. My grandmother Antonia Liro, at 21 was also 4’9”. I have no ship manifest for my grandmother, Julianna Ingram, but her sister Mary’s record says she was 4’8”. My biological grandfather, Jacob Engram Jr, is listed as 5’9” on his WWII draft registration card. He’s a jolly green giant compared to the others.

The height issue is evident in Charles and Antonia’s 1912 wedding photo which looks like they put their heads into cardboard cut outs of a bride and groom.

*Charles and Antonia Jakiela June 24, 1912*

Their four male children ended up between Steve at 5’5” and Walt who reached 5’9”. If his parents had been alive when he registered for the draft, he would have towered over them by a foot!

My dad, John Jakiela, was 5’6” and my mother was 5’3”. I always say, “if I wasn’t born a twin I bet I would have been taller!” But, in all seriousness, I’ll take my twin over the height.

*2nd and 3rd in line (Dana Smith leading the way)*

Janice, at 18 months older, always had 2-3 inches on us. Just enough to not have to hem every pair of pants she got! Gail and I had a 4” growth spurt in 6th grade and except for a few more inches between then and 18, we were done at 4’11”. In standing in a line by height, we’re forever in the front and the shortest of all the relatives.

It pays to marry up! All five of the next generation are over 5 feet and the two of the next generation look like they will be able to take their place at… the end of the line.

More Cousin Memories

I started my memories of my cousin Mal here and I’m going to continue the story now.

In Mal’s senior year of high school, he and 5 other young men in the state were selected by Senator Thomas Dodd to take the special examinations for an appointment to the Naval Academy. The senator “bypassed” the standard selection of principal and alternate and instead placed all of them chosen on a competitive basis and he was one of the two.

*Mal’s graduation from Notre Dame HS West Haven*

Mal headed off to Annapolis in 1960, the same year my twin and I were born, and our older sister was 2 years old – and he was our first cousin – a whole different generation.

Mal went to Annapolis with plans to play football. My Aunt Judy said he had to stop because of headaches but according to his obituary it was “an epic boxing match” that put an end to his football career.

Parents weekend freshman year

When Mal was in high school he started dating Margaret Donroe – Margie – from Hamden. My aunt would tell us how they would be on the phone and Mal would have the phone resting on his shoulder as Margie just chatted away on the phone and he would grunt occasionally to let her know he was listening. Margie was so vivacious and pretty and I just thought they were the most beautiful couple in the world!

*Margie at Bob’s Holy Trinity school graduation 1960*

Naval Academy graduation June 3, 1964

June was a busy time for the Bellafronto Family! Mal graduated from the Naval Academy on Wednesday, June 3 1964.

He and Marge were married three days later in Hamden Connecticut on Saturday, June 6th. My sisters and I were 6 and 4 and we were at the wedding but I’m not sure about the reception.

After their wedding and honeymoon, Mal and Marge headed off to his duty station in Yokosuka Japan where he would be aboard the guided missile light cruiser the USS Oklahoma City, the flagship of the 7th Fleet.

While they were in Japan, I would look out my bedroom window and watch the sun come up over the hill and I would think that on the other side of the hill was Japan and as the sun set there, it came up here! Their oldest son, Malcolm III, was born in Japan and their second son, Eric, was born in San Francisco after his tour was completed.

*Japan was going to sleep on the other side of this hill…*

Whenever they would come to the east coast, Aunt Judy made sure everyone got together to visit with them.

After Mal left the Navy, he got into the paper industry. I remember them living in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, maybe Illinois, California, and finally Oregon. It was too bad that by the time I moved to California, they had already moved!

As the years went by, we didn’t see them as often because Aunt Judy and Uncle Mal moved to Florida.

When my cousin Bill got married in Illinois in 1987, we were together with Mal and Marge (known as Maggie by then) for the first time in a long time. Aunt Judy and Uncle Mal were there too, and we’ve always had such a fun time being with them, this visit was no exception.

*Marge, Mal, Aunt Judy, Uncle Mal, and my twin Gail*, *his goddaughter*

I saw Marge one last time at their son Eric’s wedding in San Jose in 1993 or 94 when we were living in California. Sadly, she passed away in 2009 after a reoccurrence of breast cancer.

Fast forward….

In 2013, Mal’s brother Bob was hosting a family reunion at our cottage in Lebanon CT for his daughter Cathy and her family visiting from Morocco. Mal, young Mal, and Eric came out from the west coast for the party. Bob and his wife Teri brought Aunt Judy who was now 96 years old. We had a wonderful time visiting with everyone! It felt like one of the Posluszny Fourth of July parties I’ve written about. We shared hours of memories and a lot of laughter.

The following year, 2014, Mal and Mary, his partner of a few years, were heading east. Mal would be attending his 40th Naval Academy reunion. I met with Mal during the week and we took a walk around the home on Clifton Street that his mother and mine grew up in. It was in bad shape after water damage and (probably) foreclosure, but the walkway to the back of the house was still there and the odd little entry into the basement.

I also contacted the owner of the family home on Lincoln Avenue to arrange a visit there. Their parents bought the house from Aunt Judy and Uncle Mal and they bought it from their parents. It really is a great neighborhood! We both enjoyed walking through the house, seeing the changes, and seeing what stayed the same.

Mary came out the following week, we had dinner together, and they stayed at our cottage in Lebanon Ct. The cottage his family had for the majority of his years growing up was in the next town so he and Mary spent time driving around the area and visiting the former family cottage on Pickerel Lake.

That would be the last time I saw him, but I enjoyed an email exchange, infrequent but more frequent than that with other long-distance family (hint, hint).

I talked to Mary, his partner last week and we had a nice conversation about their time together and my memories of him.

Malcolm James Bellafronto Jr 1942-2014

A Cousin’s Passing

I found out earlier this month that one of my cousins passed away in Oregon on July 15th. If you know me, or read my posts, you know that I am the Keep of All Things Family so I wanted to share my memories and thoughts on him.

My cousin, Malcolm James Bellafronto Jr, was born in October of 1942. He was the son of my Aunt Judy, my mother’s next older sibling and her husband, Mal. He was nicknamed Butch (I don’t know how he got that name). They lived on North Orchard Street when he was born.

When he was a year old, my Uncle Mal went into the Navy and my Aunt Judy and Butch moved in with my grandmother, grandfather, Aunt Tootsie, and my mother. He was a big little kid! He shared a few stories with me and although he doesn’t recall much of living on Clifton Street, he did remember this story:

During the war my mother and I lived with Gram when my father was in the Navy. I don’t have any specific memories of that period. I do have some vague recollections of Grandpa P.

There was one incident that my mother told me about later. Apparently, I used to spend time out in back with Grandpa. You remember how big the garden was. There was a gate leading into the garden that you had to lift up to get in and out. Well I wandered into the house one time and everyone wanted to know how I got out of the garden. So I showed them, lifting the gate with a loud grunt. Evidently, Grandpa always grunted when he lifted the gate. Mal was 18 months old at the time of that video!

*Aunt Judy holding Butch and sister in law Millie 1944*

He was the center of attention while living on Clifton Street!

In 1945, while his dad was on leave, the three of them drove cross country to California where his ship was docked. Aunt Judy and Butch were planning on staying with her Tante Lizzie and Uncle Ben while Mal was out to sea but he got back on board ship and was told he fulfilled his service and so was done and they came back home to Connecticut.

His brother Bob was born four years later and they eventually moved around the corner from us on Lincoln Drive in a home that Uncle Mal built with help from the students in the Wilcox Tech carpentry program where he was an automotive teacher.

The majority of males in our family attended Notre Dame High School in West Haven, CT. He played football there and relayed the following story to me:

“For the 3 summers of my high school years I would live with Gram for the two weeks before school started. My dad had August off and the family would stay at the lake in Moodus. I started early for football, 3 a day drills. Walk to the train station in the morning, train to New Haven then 2 buses to West Haven. We were on the field by 8 and finished up around 4. Then buses, train and walk to Gram’s. What I remember was how long her hair was and how she would brush it every night while we watched TV. And she was an absolute fanatic about wrestling, pounding the couch and yelling at the TV. For the 3 summers of my high school years I would live with Gram for the two weeks before school started”

Also – “But the main memory is of Gram’s cooking. The pastries she made on holidays. Her cheesecake was out of this world. Tootsie got the cheese part right but could never get the crust. As far as regular meals, I remember everything being overcooked and pretty well tasteless.”

He also told me that when they were building the stairs for the cottage in Colchester, he was the free labor! He said it was a lot of hard work and it kept him in shape for football.

He also told this story about staying at Gram’s house during the summer and the trains that passed along the side of the house going from the steel mill to the main railroad tracks:

“I also remember picking up coal that the engineer would throw into the yard when they stopped at the street. You remember the train tracks going to the steel mill behind the house.

I slept in the front bdrm by the tracks. I distinctly remember one night when I was staying there for football waking up in the middle of the night to the most god-awful noise and most brilliant white light filling the room. Had no idea where I was and what was happening.

When I finally came around enough to look out the window, I saw that the commotion was a very large steam engine stopping at the street with its carbon arc front light shining in the window. Scared the hell out of me.”

*Cousin Charles Jakiela, my parents, Butch at their wedding (altar boys)*

I hope you don’t mind if I end this here. After graduation from Notre Dame High School, Mal was heading to the Naval Academy in Annapolis Maryland.

To Be Continued….

Traveling the United States

The Week 28 topic for 52 Ancestors in 52 Week is Trains.

It’s fortunate that I saved my mother’s albums of photos and postcards she collected in her teens and 20s. They gave me a look at some of the trips she took.

The first extensive trip she took, along with her sister Tootsie, was to San Antonio Texas in 1943 to visit their brother Connie. Connie was stationed at Fort Sam Houston, arriving sometime in May of 1943.

It will be no surprise to anyone in our family that he was in the Quartermaster Corps of the Army, which was in charge of food and clothing, and specifically the Bakery Company. He was working at Hellman’s Bakery in Wallingford when he enlisted and after he returned, as well as owning a bakery for some years.

Betty and Toots started off in August of 1943 most likely taking the trolley to New Haven and a train to New York. I love that postcards were the mode of communication!

*“We’re off!” Postcards to parents and Connie*

They stopped in St. Louis Missouri from Thursday until their next train departed on Sunday. I wonder how much sightseeing they did!

There were in San Antonio by August 28th and visited with Connie, saw the sites of the city and met many people on the way and in San Antonio. The ladies with my mother and aunt in the picture are spouses of Connie’s friends. On the way is always more fun than the trip home, so there are no postcards from their way home, but they made it back safely.

*Connie, back middle, sitting with friends*

Betty took another trip the following year, in September 1944, to Los Angeles California to visit with her Tante Lizzie and Uncle Bernard Weiss. They had been living there since 1935. Bernard worked as a “brush painter” at a movie studio and although no occupation is listed for Elizabeth in the 1940 census, family lore says they were domestic help (maid and chauffeur) for an family. When the family was on vacation for the summer Elizabeth and Ben would either drive east to visit family or travel to Europe to visit family. My mom saved the postcards they sent as they made their way to and from California!

*Postcards from her first stop in Chicago*

It’s touching that one of her cards was specifically to her father and sad to think he would be gone 3 months later. That’s a story for another time.

The postmarks from Chicago are September 4 and it might have taken another 2 to 4 days to travel to Los Angeles. The following two postcards are dated September 13th and 18th.

My mother was so good at labeling pictures but she didn’t always provide last names of her girlfriends! I’m guessing the girl with her is her cousin, Pauline Wirth who was the same age as Betty. I know they were fairly close, although she lived in Queens with her family, and her mother Mary, was Elizabeth and Julianna’s sister so the trip would make sense.

While there, they had a visit from some neighborhood boys, Bernard Orosz and Peter Kliarsky and visited Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

Again, there are no postcards on the trip home! But they appear to have made it home safely.

I would love to take a train across the country, traveling in a sleeper car or roommate to get away from people if I need to but I also know there are usually delays and that might make me crazy.

The Trip of a Lifetime

The Week 27 topic of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is Airplanes.

I told you about my dad’s experience being stationed in England during WWII in the Effects of War post in June. That’s pretty much the extent of any stories about airplanes because most of my other family members were in the Navy! But here’s a fun memory –

St. Patrick’s Day in 1986 was on a Monday. On that morning, while upstairs getting ready for work, I heard a commotion downstairs. My mother was in the kitchen having breakfast, what happened? I suddenly remembered, she was in competition to win a trip to Ireland through WELI 960 radio and OMG her name must have been called!

I raced downstairs to check on her and yes, they said her name! Evidently, she called once and was so hysterical they hung up on her! Finally she got through to them to claim her prize. An all-expense paid trip for two to Ireland!

My parents, both in their early 60s, had never been on a plane before! They applied and received their passports, applied for a credit card, received their foreign country drivers license, and they were ready to go on August 26, 1986.

I remember the day they left, someone from my mother’s office was driving them from Connecticut to JFK airport and he was late picking them up! I’m sure they were silently swearing while waiting for him and on the ride, but they made it!

I have no record of their travel while there, but I know they kissed the Blarney Stone, stayed at some little bed and breakfast sites, and shopped. My mom bought me a kilt in the Dress Stewart pattern and claddagh earrings because I already had a ring. I wore the skirt for years and hung onto it for many more.

They had a wonderful seven days exploring Ireland together before returning home on September 2nd.

It is fortunate they had this time together because only a few months later my mother started exhibiting signs of memory loss. At the end of January 1987, she was diagnosed with Glioblastoma Multiform, and she passed away on April 4, 1987. I’m grateful they were able to experience this trip of a lifetime!

The Story Teller

The topic for Week 25 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, is The Story Teller.

I’ll tell you how and why I started researching and writing about my ancestors.

American history was one of my favorite subjects in school. How the United States was created, and the people involved. The first biography I read was on Abigail Adams in elementary school. I loved the Little House on the Prarie books imagining what life was like in those days.

I noticed in my 20s that I asked many questions about people – where they came from, their families, education – and I loved hearing stories about them and their lives.

Everyone on my maternal side of the family lived nearby so I knew their names, I knew the names of my maternal great-grandparents because their pictures were hanging on the wall at my grandmother’s house (just their faces – it was a little strange!). On the left in the background of the picture below are my grandmother Julianna and grandfather Konrad. On the right is my maternal great-grandmother Gertrude and great-grandfather Ludwig.

Uncle Connie, Aunt Tootsie, and Aunt Judy 1960

My paternal side was similar but different. Out of 5 siblings, 3 lived in the Wallingford. One, Uncle Eddie, lived in Meriden with his wife and two sons. I have no memory of meeting Aunt Ann or his sons although we went to a son’s wedding when I was 9 or 10. Uncle Walt was in the Navy and lived primarily in California and Louisianna with his wife and two sons.

So what prompted my Ancestry search and storytelling?

The ancestry part came about on our move from California to Connecticut. We stopped in Meeker Oklahoma to visit with my husband’s family. We met with his sister Linda and Cody and I met his Aunt Katherine and Great-Aunt Mildred. Aunt Mildred was her family researcher. She had family sheets for her and her husband Jesse and all of Jesse’s siblings, at least 10 that lived to adulthood including my husband’s grandmother Virgia Cleo.

While reading through the family sheets and various notes, it was exciting to think about the place in history this family held. It made me curious about mine.

Between 1995 and 2000, I used Family Tree Maker software for my work. In 2000, Ancestry created its website to help people share their family trees and information. I still had to mail requests for documents but this was a good start. Once documents started coming and people added more information, it was easier to piece information together. The stronger Ancestry has become the more family there is and the DNA connections made it even stronger. My Heritage is another site I joined because it is a better tool for Eastern European records.

From there, I started asking questions of my older family members like my dad and his siblings and my mother’s two sisters. They were all full of information and of course, Aunt Tootsie had all the family pictures. The stories they told were usually stand-alone but sometimes a comment would be a clue to help something else suddenly make sense or confirm what someone else had said. I remember how crazy it was to discover my half-aunt Joanne through DNA when we couldn’t figure out how we were related or to hear about my grandmother taking in her cousin’s infant daughter and then seeing the documents where she had to give her up for adoption because of her own growing family.

I’m always excited when I find new ancestors or learn the dates and locations where they lived. It helps to piece together their lives and the stories are created from there. Some people left us far too soon. By telling their stories, someone will realize they got those woodworking skills from their dad, grandfather, AND great-grandfather. Or that fierceness comes from their great-grandmother. Telling their stories keeps the connections to the past alive.