Sometimes You Have to Disconnect to Connect

Today I played hooky from work in the name of Christmas.  For years I have wanted to take part in helping with the KONY Coins for Kids project but have never done more than give donations in the various boxes set up around town to collect for the cause.  There is a lot of work that goes in to pulling this off every year and this year I decided to trade in one of my vacation days and do some work of a different kind. I chose as my part of service to wrap gifts for kids in need.

All of the fundraising and shopping take place and all of the purchases as well as many more donated items are taken to the Dixie Center where they are sorted and grouped by families.  Tables are set up with the necessary supplies - several rolls of gift wrap, scissors, tape, tags.  Everything you need is there.  Bags with the items for a family are brought to the tables along with a list of the items needed for the family you are wrapping for.  You open the bags, sort the items, see if there are an equal number of gifts for each child, and then wrap everything up and re-bag it so it can be given to a different group of volunteers for delivery.  If it appears you are a little light on gifts in your bags there are tables set up in a general area of the hall where toys, etc. are sorted by age appropriateness and you take your list and go "shopping" again to round out whatever you may need to make sure things are as even as possible among the members of the family you are working on. The whole operation is very well organized.

Wrapping starts at 8:00 AM and volunteers just show up and are put to work.  There are individuals like myself who come alone, groups of friends who come together, families who do this as an act of service together, and I even saw a group of Snow Canyon High School girls in some sort of uniform (sports or service club) there working a table of their own.  There was also a family who brought a small playpen for their younger child and set it up next to their table so they could make a day of it.  I met one very nice lady who had been the recipient of gifts from the program herself many years ago who has been volunteering for about 10 years now.  The Christmas Spirit is very much alive at these tables!

 Since this was my first experience doing this I wanted to totally immerse myself in it. I was very much looking forward to getting drunk on the milk of human kindness.  To paraphrase Charles Dickens, I was giddy as a schoolgirl.  The instructions for the project are taped to the table so it is left up to you to open the bags and dive right in. As you finish wrapping you tag each gift with the name of the child and the family number that has been assigned.  A NUMBER. Seems sort of cold, huh?  It's necessary though.  There are 1500 families receiving help this year and there has to be some organization.  This is where it gets you, though..  So far this post has been about the practical and technical side of how this works but there is another side.  A much deeper side.  And if you can quiet your heart your spirit will tune in to it and that is when it hits you.  That is when you truly feel the rush of the Christmas Spirit and the tears spring to your eyes and you feel that Ah, Ha moment.  You connect in a way that can only be explained as spiritual with a name on a sheet of paper.  You look at the typed data that says "1 yr old Female" then look at the fuzzy little doggy slippers you are about to wrap and you CONNECT.  You feel this child's presence as if she were sitting right across the table from you.  And it feels good.  It feels right.  You know you are doing work that is on a much higher plane that anything you would have done at the office today.
 

Death of a Cemetery?

It happens.  I guess, in a way, you could look at it as the natural order of things.  Doesn't make it any easier, but that's just the way it is.  What am I talking about, you ask?   I'm talking about vanishing cemeteries.   Small, privately owned resting places for our ancestors that no one seems to care about any more.   I have 2 of these that I must contend with in my family history quest.

The first one is a family cemetery in Virginia.  The Woliver family to be precise.  I have a picture of this one, but all you see is a heavily weeded, woody area that almost looks like a forest.  The person who sent the picture assures me the Woliver clan is buried in there somewhere.  Heaven only knows if there are any stones or markers.  It would take three months of hacking away with machetes just to be able to see surface dirt much less uncovering any kind of grave markers.  There are no indicators as to the entrance to the grounds or anything else that marks it as a graveyard.  It just looks like another clump of weeds along the roadside.  Finding my mother's ancestors is going to be a difficult job if this is what I have to look forward to.

The other cemetery is in better condition.  But it, too, has problems.  These problems stem from modern day growth.  If you play around with Google Maps and do a search for Erin Grove Cemetery in Roseville, Michigan you will see what I mean.  This little cemetary is backed by the Edsel-Ford Freeway and is situated in between the parking lot of the Red Roof Inn and one of the habitational buildings of the Holiday Inn.  Directly across the street is a very large Burlington Coat Factory.  It is surrounded by commercial real estate. 

Our family has 3 ancestors who are buried in this little cemetery.  Well, three that we know of.  But we are beginners at this genealogy game and we haven't uncovered that much of the family history yet.  What I do know is that where there are three there is the probability of more.  And this concerns me.  Because until we are able to search out all the connections we won't know and by the time we do, if there are any more of our people here...they may not be here.  This little spot of earth is privately owned.  And the person who owns it has indicated that the records are in terrible shape. He told one of the local librarians the records had been left on his doorstep in a toilet paper box and that some of them had blown down the street before they could be saved.  Hearing that made me angry to say the least.  Why would someone do that?  How could someone have so little respect that they would do such a thing?

It is my understanding that the gentleman who owns this property is in his 70's and maintains the grounds with the help of his sons. According to the librarian who contacted me with this information, he is a very sweet person who took on this project because he has family buried there as well, and friends of the family.  People he knew growing up.  He said he does it for the love of it and out of respect for place.  I admire him.  I think what he is doing is wonderful.   And I am afraid for this little piece of ground.  Afraid of what will happen to it, and yes, to my ancestors when this nice man passes on himself.  I have uneasy thoughts of this plot being taken over by commercial growth in the area and blending in to the landscape that currently surrounds it.  I've attended a few classes at Family History Expos where the lecturers have told tales of exactly that kind of thing happening.  It makes me sad.  It also makes me want to take action. 

There is only one way to contact the owner of this property and that is via fax.  I have done that in the hope that he can sift through whatever records there are for possible burial records on my three relatives.  Since the only means of contact is through fax, I am hoping he will fax me back, even if he can't locate anything, and that his fax will include some other means of contacting him.  The librarian shared with me that finances are not so good and he does this all out of his own pocket.  

I would love to talk with him and learn the history of this place.  Maybe we could figure out a way to help make things better.  

I hope so...for Great Grandma, Great Grandpa and Great Uncle Frank's sake.

Conflicted

You know a story is well written when it continues to haunt you well after you've turned the last page.  This is one of those stories. 
This book was recommended by one of the speakers at the 2012 St. George Family History Expo.  The topic of the class discussion was using Prison, Criminal and Asylum Records in family history research.  When the discussion turned to asylums there was a great deal of historical information given about those types of facilities and this book was mentioned as being a wonderful reference for manuevering the maze of research into those records.

At first I was intrigued by the premise that a person could exist for over 50 years and that existance could be so well hidden inside a system that family members never knew of the person.  That is the story behind Annie's Ghosts.  The author of this book grew up in a family where his mother always claimed to be an only child.  Shortly before her death, during a visit with her doctor, she let a comment slip about having a sister who was institutionalized when the girls were very young.  The comment was disregarded at the time, but 6 months after his mother passed away something happened that brought it back into the forefront of thought and set this family on a quest to find a member of the family that no one ever knew about.

That quest takes the reader on a journey through family interviews, collateral relationships, court records, medical records, bureaucratic red tape nightmares, and world history.  I found myself sad (for Annie), angry (at the author's mother), frustrated (over the bureacracy the author encountered on his quest), even more angry (at a system that stripped the subject of her rights), elated (that the author was able to find the missing pieces to his puzzle), and in the end...somewhat empty, because nothing can be done to right the wrongs of the past for this family.

From a genealogical research perspective, this book shows the work involved in moving beyond immediate family for answers to seemingly unanswerable questions.  If not for "collateral lines" and interviews with friends of the family, and friends of those friends, a lot of what was discovered about Annie would still be hidden somewhere in time.  It is a testament to persistance.  Many times the author covered a point, only to go back later and find additional information where he thought he had found everything he could.  Family history work is just that...WORK.  And the author did an amazing job in researching his aunt.  He made me care about her.  In the end I think that was the point.

Rest sweetly, Annie.  You are not a forgotten daughter of Heavenly Father for you have a nephew who has made sure you will always be remembered.