January 26 – Tradition/Heritage (Journaling)

We had plenty of traditions growing up but we never really took many pictures. I sooo wish my parents had taken more. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to stroll down memory lane while trying to find the right picture to scrap!!

 

1-26-18 - Tradition/Heritage (Journaling)

RULES:

1. Tell a story that is set in the 20th century (1900 – 1999) in your single-page layout.
2. Prominently display the date or decade on the page.
3. Optional: include up to 3 photos that relate to your story. These can be current photos.
4. Your journaling should be a minimum of 150 words, in complete sentences, to qualify as complete. Word art will not qualify toward your word count. You cannot use the same word 150 times. You cannot use the same sentence over and over again. Journaling challenges are meant for telling stories;
5. Your journaling should be legible and readable

Credits:
VW - When Skies are Gray - papers
etc. note to self - word bits (changed to b/w)
metal airplane from my CU stash by LouCee
element cluster by CC from my PU stash
Font: American Typewriter

This an excerpt from my dad's 'life story' that he wrote in a notebook and that I am in the process of typing for him. He was in the Navy from 1956-1967. I wrote the journaling as if he was telling it...which is the way he wrote it... and I purposely used only b/w papers and such.

Journaling reads:


"My senior year, Bob and I joined the Navy Reserve in St. Joe, MO. We were both hoping to get into a Navy school. Bob was into photography and I wanted to work on airplanes. We had decided that if we didn’t get a school within 6 months, we would quit the reserves and join up.

We didn’t get any schools, so we quit the reserves and turned our uniforms in. We decided our best bet was to join the Air Force, but the recruiter was a real jerk so we went next door and joined the Navy. They sent us down to Kansas City, MO for induction and physicals. We had our choice of boot camps – Either Great Lakes (Chicago) or San Diego, CA. Since boot camp was 13 weeks we didn’t want to be marching in the snow so we chose San Diego; since by now it was August 1956.

The Navy flew us to Los Angeles, CA on a TWA Connie. When we got to LA they kept everyone on the plane until some celebrity got off first. They didn’t tell us who it was. While we were sitting the terminal for our ride to San Diego, we saw an old guy sitting by himself reading the paper. It was Jimmy Durante and he was waiting to be picked up by his driver. We talked to him for a while and Bob got his autograph. He was really a neat guy to talk to.

And that is how I met Jimmy Durante."

 

Day 26 Tradition/Heritage



Credits; Paislee Press (template-Press plate No 41), Kim Jensen (papers-Brushed kraft), Font Title-Kaizoku

Journaling;
All my father's family lived in the same place as ours, except for my father's youngest sister, aunt Annie. Aunt Annie was married to uncle Frans, a real Limburger who spoke with a soft g as is usual in Limburg. They lived in Roermond, in the south of the Netherlands. Once a year we went to visit the family and in good weather I played in the garden.
It was not a small garden, it was a huge garden. The garden was also sloping down and so I let myself roll down with my mother, and later with my sisters, down the grass to go back upstairs and play the whole game again.
For years we came to Limburg every summer, sometimes for a single day, sometimes for a weekend or a week and it was always a pleasure to play in that beautiful garden. I often think back to that big garden and aunt Annie. She is far in the 90s, the only one of all my father's brothers and sisters who is still alive and she still lives in the house with that beautiful garden…​

 

Fun challenge. I've been wanting to document some of the family stories and now I've got a start!

 

Another one created on the iPad

 

3d attempt a charm, I expect I overlooked something, and will get a message soon

 

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love this challenge cause it gets me to use my old family photos for a long term project i am working on to do a heritage book for our daughters

 

Thank you for giving me the nudge to write about this. I rarely work on my all- about-me kind of pages.

 

Day 26
Tradition/Heritage (Journaling)
Used Licensed to Drive by Kristin Aagard.

 

Lorieh - Where do you live? I lived near Lexington KY during that blizzard and I now live about 30 minutes south of Cincinnati.

 

journaling -
This is a photo of my grandparents, Hilda and John Stokes, taken in their yard in Clairton, Pennsylvania probably around 1930. My John sent it to me several years ago, and it is the only picture That I have ever seen of my grandmother. I like to think that she is pregnant with my mother in this picture. She is only 21 years old, married just a year. 2 years after my mother was born, she gave birth to another daughter and just 3 years after that she had twin boys. All before the age of 24. What is the sad part to this story is that just 6 months after the twins were born, she was dead. She died on November 21, 1935. I remember when my mother told us how her mother had died so young. She had just found out that she was pregnant again. That would be 5 babies in 5 years, so hard for anyone, I would think. How sad that she realized early on that she could not possibly take care of another baby, and that her only way out was a self-induced abortion using a knitting needle. How different the lives our my mother and her siblings would have been had this not happened. So many possibilities. This is a big factor in while now, after all these years, my whole family adamantly supports a women’s right to choose to have a safe, legal abortion if needed.

 

During the blizzard I lived near Columbus. I now live about 30 minutes south of Lake Erie. Still an Ohio girl! It was quite a storm wasn't it!

 

I could have done more with this one but honestly at this point I can't even look at this without crying. It's good enough to turn in.



Journaling at the gallery.

 

Does the journaling need to be from me or can I interview my parents or grandparents?

 

I ended up with 333 words..never give a family historian a heritage challenge!

 

I've spent the whole day in the 1950's <VBG> Lot's of fun getting lost in the internet.
Here is my heritage page. I put the date "1950's" in orange so it would be prominent. There are 195 words, not counting the descriptions under the three photos and the tickets. (see gallery for journaling).