Prompted to Share our Family Heritage

Last month I wrote a post about my project of scanning my father-in-law's Air Force Papers. You can read it here: 
https://jamisonsomewhereintime.blogspot.com/2019/01/sharing-pilots-treasured-cabin-bag.html. After scanning the papers that were stored in the pilot's "satchel", I printed each page and prepared 3-ring binders to distribute to my husband's six children, his half-brother, and his nephew. 

Yesterday, my nephew received his notebook as a Valentine's Day gift. His wife graciously made a video of him as he opened his gift and sent it to me. That was MY Valentine's Gift! In a thank you note I received from him afterward, he expressed the fact that several weeks ago he had expressed to his wife that he often wondered what his grandfather did during World War II. And here within weeks of expressing that concern, he received the collection of Air Force Papers that revealed all those details about his grandfather's WWII service. 

In addition to sending my nephew the 3-ring binder of papers, I sent him this collection of old newspapers that were published in the home county of my father-in-law, his grandfather. You can read my blog post about them here: 
https://jamisonsomewhereintime.blogspot.com/2019/02/my-88-year-span-of-heirloom-newspapers.html

Again, as a coincidence, or actual prompting from my late husband, I sent these antiques to my nephew shortly after he had expressed to his wife a desire to know more about the hometown and county of his father and paternal grandparents and great-grandparents. Since I don't believe in coincidences, I choose to believe it was my husband, Larry C. Jamison, who prompted me in love to send these family heirlooms to his nephew. It's gratifying to know that they've been received in the same Spirit that they were sent, that Spirit of sharing and loving our family, our heritage, and honoring our beloved ancestors. 

Larry's Caving Photo Album Re-discovered

I've been busy on my days off from work since Larry's funeral organizing his possessions and sorting them according to things his children will want to take home and those treasures I will keep. In the past two days, I've reorganized several bookshelves. It was a favorite activity of ours to attend book sales and gather up books on topics that were of interest to us. And in the 27 years that I've known Larry, we collected a LOT of books! 

Larry purchased and saved many books on topics that I'm not personally interested in. I know I won't read them in the years to come, so I'm offering them to his children. My husband was a man of MANY interests, as reflected in his library. He has books and was widely-read on topics such as Classical Composers, Opera, Wilderness Survival, Politics and Government, History, Pop Music, Airplanes and Flying, Caving, Artists, Psychology, Japan, Business, Literature (he was a big Shakespeare fan!), Native Americans, and many others I'm not recalling at the moment. He and I shared a love for the Gospel so we have hundreds of Christian, religious and LDS books in our library. I will not be giving those away, as I plan to read them in my coming years.  

As I was pulling books from the shelves this morning, I discovered a spiral notebook that I hadn't see before. It was dated 1967 and was a sort of scrapbook/photo album that he prepared that contained photographs of caving expeditions Larry participated in while in the Air Force in Arizona. He had never shown this book to me! Making a surprise discovery like this was my reward for the laborious task I had undertaken! Thank you, my dear husband! You're still delivering surprises and adding fun to my life! 

My 88 Year Span of Heirloom Newspapers

My husband felt it quite a privilege to own a collection of old newspapers from his hometown of Waynesburg, Greene County Pennsylvania, that had been handed down to him from his mother, who got them from her father. The earliest paper in this collection is a Waynesburg Messenger, dated 14 Jan 1874 and is in the  condition you see in the above photo. Very fragile!!! It's hard to imagine a paper product lasting 145 years! 

This Greene County Democrat is dated 1 Mar 1889.

The Waynesburg Messenger, 29 May 1889

The Greene County Democrat 22 Nov 1889

The Democrat Messenger 11 Nov 1927

Larry's grandfather was the Russell Roberts mentioned in the above article after he'd won re-election as Clerk of the Courts. This is from the above paper, the Democrat Messenger of  11 Nov 1927. 

This copy of the Democrat Messenger from Waynesburg, PA, dated 2 Apr 1962 publishes the obituary of Larry's beloved grandfather Russell Roberts on the front page. 

I can't recall which edition of the above newspapers included this short article, but I found it interesting and unusual, and quite typical of the variety of stories published long ago.