Family Memorabilia - Dave’s Midwestern Ohio Memories

A Series of Guest Blogs by an out-of-state Fish Report reader originally from this area about fond memories of growing up in Midwestern Ohio during the 50’s & 60’s.

Family Memorabilia

Three of my uncles celebrated their birthdays recently at a party in Sun City, Florida, which fortunately I was able to attend. Turns out all their birthdays (and my mother’s) are around the same time of the year, so nine months earlier in May must have been a special “spring fling” time for my grandparents! My birthday uncle's ages are 84, 91 & 86, L to R in the photo above. Of course many stories were shared, but beyond the stories, the highlight was touring a spare bedroom in my uncle's home dedicated to family memorabilia and photos. It’s still work in progress, but the many items already displayed brought back so many memories and created some new ones. For example, my 91 year-old uncle worked for John Deere and was stationed all over the world on assignments. Along with their suitcases and baggage, the family transferred each time a Norway spruce that started out as a sampling 40 years ago. It's now planted behind my uncle’s home and is 50’ tall; see the photo below.

An even more amazing part of the story is that on the very day my uncle’s dear wife died in 2007, the spruce tree sprouted the cross at the tip shown on the next photo. And over 20 years prior to her death, one of their son’s recorded a song for his mother and sent her a cassette tape of the song for Mother’s Day. Just recently, her grandson, Scott, who is the tallest member of the Grammy award winning acappella group Pentonix, added his voice to the track and created a duet song decades apart. Click here to listen to the song.

Also included in the family memorabilia room were the service records of all my uncles that I’ve already written about in a Veteran’s Day blog. Plus the amazing photo below of a family reunion on the farm that had been in the family for 110 years. The reunion was held that year because the 100 acre farm was about to be sold as unfortunately nobody in the family wanted to operate the farm; a similar saga suffered by countless other small farms in the area that were originally settled and cleared by our ancestors.