Bringing the Past to Life

Dear Diary,

The last day of 2015.  It has been a such a fascinating and illuminating year for me.  My genealogical research has opened up the past to me in ways I would never have imagined.  But beyond collecting names and dates, I found trying to bring these people to life, to see them as real people and not just dates on a page, was the most satisfying.

This is my father's father, Anthony.  He died in 1939 and, of course, I never knew him.  This is the only photograph of him that exists to my knowledge, my only visual reference of him.  I colorized it, my first attempt at this sort of thing, as a way to breathe a bit of life into the faded black and white picture.

But beyond this image, I have his daughter's words about him, thanks to her daughter, my cousin Mary.  Reading them and looking into his eyes I got a real sense of who this man was and I think I would have loved him dearly.

"I can see him now, in summer under the old elm tree, removing his cap and taking out his pipe.  His complete respect for mankind and the order of the universe was not evident to me as a child.  I only knew that I had to me near him and I felt restful and calm."

Another thing I have experienced this year was how some unexpected thing can open up new ways to look at the past.  I finally had time yesterday to look at my new Smithsonian Magazine that arrived last week and in it was an article about an old man who had served in WWII.  My jaw dropped when I read that he had served in the same company as my father.  I was able to read his memories of the battles, the same battles my father was in but never talked about.  Along with my father's letters from Europe that Mary gave me a couple of weeks ago, a new understanding and appreciation of my father emerged.   One of his letters read:

" One thing for sure the people back home have no idea what war is.  All those stories you must have read about, about starving, killing, and concentration camps are all true, I have seen it all myself."

I wondered if the man in the article might have known my father.  There were between 100-250 men in a company.  It is possible.  What was more important was this window into my father's life.  For a brief moment as I read the account, I was with my father during that horrible conflict.

So, this year I am most thankful for this opportunity to get to know my ancestors in a real and significant way.  By visiting the places that were important to them, of reading about their world and experiencing what I could first hand, and now through the words of others.  Yes, it has been an amazing year.