Never Forgotten

Photo credit: Megan Westfall
Before he passed away two years ago, I used to have my daughters call my father on Veteran’s Day. At the age of 16, he left home and joined the Navy. He put in 20 years of service, retiring at the ripe old age of 36. He then went on to become a vocational education teacher and put in another 20 years of service in that career as well.
My daughters had a school concert this week. It had a patriotic theme in honor of the upcoming holiday and turned out very nice. (I have a hard time listening to Taps, though, as it brings me right back to my father’s funeral.) The superintendent issued a challenge to the students there. He asked them to write down the reason we celebrate Veteran’s Day and bring the explanation into school the next day. He said he would make it worth their while, but didn’t say what he was offering. On the way home, I told my daughters that they should simply bring in a photo of their grandfather and tell the superintendent that’s the reason we celebrate Veteran’s Day.  At home, I hunted up an old photo of him in his Navy uniform and handed it to my daughter to put in her backpack.
My dad had colon cancer around 2005 and then developed lung cancer later which he died from in 2009. Although he fought bravely, eventually he knew he would not win the final battle. So he packed up all his photographs and memorabilia he had collected over the years and gave them to me. I have a large box (really more trunk-sized) of the stuff he gave me. All I have left of him is in that box. While digging through the box to find the photo for my daughter, I had the idea of arranging a collage of items related to his Navy career. The above photo (credited to my daughter) is what resulted.
While deciding what items to include in the collage, I picked up his Navy yearbook and thumbed through it. I noticed that he had carefully gone through the book and turned down each page that contained a photograph of him. He knew that he would not always be around to point these out in the future, but his gesture let me know that he never wants to be forgotten.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bannerman Family Mystery

Image
Among the many old photographs originally in my grandfather's possession, there is one that has haunted me and has remained a mystery all these years. The photograph is of three children with their names and ages typeset at the bottom of the photograph. “William, 10 years, Robert 8, and Maggie Bennerman, 4 Years Old.” Who were they? My grandfather was not able to identify them, though his memory was remarkably sharp and accurate until his death at the age of 96. I first noticed this picture and the others that my grandfather had in 1989 when I embarked on the adventure of genealogy. Since then I have traced all of my father's ancestors at least back to the early 1800s (and a lot beyond). But I never ran into the Bennerman name, anywhere. Not as ancestors of mine, not even as neighbors. I am lucky enough to even have a name to match the faces in the photograph in the first place. Early in my research, I visited the Tampa stake of the LDS church and I mentioned the Bennerman na
Read more

Friday Faces from the Past: Moorefield

Image
I am perusing through old photographs from my paternal grandparents side these days. In essence, I have been visiting Kentucky although really only in my mind. Things like this come and go in spurts. I have not looked at the research I have done on these lines in a number of years but every now and them something draws me back. What pulled me this time was an email from a gentleman who saw a photograph on my blog that was taken by Randolph in Cadiz, Kentucky (see the photo here ). This gentleman informed me that he and another local historian were doing research on this photographer who did work in Cadiz from about 1893 to 1913. He wanted to know if I would share an electronic copy of the photograph and also asked if I had anymore photographs taken by Randolph. I hunted around and found one more. This is a photograph identified by my grandfather as "My daddy's first cousin [John Willis Watts], Otis Moorefield." Otis Moorefield (1875-1958) Until I put the two tog
Read more

COG: The Love of Reading

Life is funny sometimes, wouldn’t you agree? I sit here this evening checking out my blogger dashboard and find Jasia’s post about reading for the Carnival Of Genealogy . Ah, reading! One of my absolute favorite pastimes. And Jasia wants to know my family’s history of reading? How ironic that on the third anniversary of my father’s death, I am asked that question, for he was influential in the development of my love of reading. Furthermore, I was in a training at work today and we were asked to discuss characteristics about our fathers that we would like to keep, toss, or add in reference to their values, beliefs, etc. One of the items I listed in the “keep” column was his emphasis on the importance of reading and education. My mother tells the story that my father had heard that reading to your child was a good thing, so he instructed my mother to read to me every night. (Until I was about eight, he was often away because of his Navy service.) He purchased several books for me,
Read more