Memorial Day 2015

We spent a lot of time in DC yesterday, looking for family graves for my first husband. Fortunately, the weather was gorgeous so it didn't matter too much that we didn't find any. Mt. Olivet has a lot of graves and without the exact locations, they were needles in a haystack.

Today, my dh is thinking that they might be in St. Mary's Cemetery which was an offshoot of Mt. Olivet or vice versa.  St. Mary's is administered by Mt. Olivet so... In any case a bit more research and a day that cemetery staff are present makes this a future visit.

But here is my father a WWII veteran, a veteran whose records either went up in smoke in the fire or drowned in the flood at the Records Center in St. Louis. That center is doomed.

Many thanks to all our veterans wherever they may be. 

TBT: Two Brothers 70 Years Ago

While I told another story about my father's family in WWII, this page relates more to my father.

I have my knee surgery on November 11th and I thought that considering how much my father went through, I can count on his support from above.

TBT - A WWII Story of 2 and 3 Brothers

My father was the 4th, I believe, of 5 children - my Uncle Jimmy, my Aunt Kathleen, my Uncle Eddie, my father Maurice and my Uncle Tommy. I don't know if there were other children that may have died as infants but considering the times, I suspect there could have been.

Here my father is on the right and my Uncle Tommy on the left. I suspect they may have been in high school as neither of them went to college. My father was 6'4 and my uncle was a good bit shorter so it looks as if Daddy hadn't finished growing.

When WWII came around, three of the brothers entered the Army. My Uncle Eddie never served and I'm not sure why but I suspect it was that he already had a child. In this article it says my Uncle Jimmy enlisted on June 6, 1942. That was my parents wedding day.  My father enlisted later that summer.

Later, my Uncle Tommy and my father met up on Germany. Growing up I never saw an article about that meeting. My Uncle Jimmy was always his parents' favorite and was the only one to go to college. Maybe no one sent the story to the local paper.  Who knows what really went on so many years ago when all the parties are now dead.

My father, on the right, wrote on the back of this image "Rear Echelon" Boyle and his brother "Combat Boyle". I doubt that any of the three brothers had an easy time and none of them ever wanted to talk about their war experience but I know my father certainly saw combat. Sadly, history lost here.

My Father, My First Veteran

back row center, my 6'4 father

Flashback Friday: It Was His Birthday

I am not one who makes a big deal of the birthday of a deceased person or the date of their death. Most of the time, those dates come and go with barely a recollection. I think some of it is that my own parents didn't mention those times and they themselves died at relatively young ages. My father died at age 53 of ALS and my mother died at age 61 of cancer.  By age 35, I no longer had living parents, and I am an only child. Family ties were mostly gone.

Here is my father in 1944, the year I was born, looking so very very young out in Washington State. Until his Army training he had never been outside of Pennsylvania. So much changed in a year when he went to Europe in the mop up after Normandy. I wish I had had a chance to know that happier young man.

Today would have been my father's 92nd birthday. It comes to mind more often now as I see the obituary of one more of his fellow WWII veterans.  Bit by bit they are leaving us, and even my father's records were destroyed in the fire at the VA records center in St. Louis. On our recent trip to CA, a priest mentioned that he was at the wake of one of these men, and very very few of his peers were still living.  This is almost 40 years since my father died. He missed so much of his life and I missed so much of him.

Flashback Friday: Rosita la Remachadora

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This is a photo from the wonderful Flickr group Collage Items. The description comes directly from the Flickr page.

From National Women's History Project--copy and display permitted where the intention is to educate and/or write women back into history.

From the pamphlet Las Mujeres: Mexican American/Chicana Women

Rosita the Riveter
With the outbreak of World War II, the nation's economic situation changed dramatically. During the Great Depression, employment opportunities had been scare, and non-US citizens were denied many jobs. With the industrial boom brought on by the war, the US opened its southern border to admit thousands of temporary workers from Mexico, and set up job training programs for people who were already living here. Garment industries doubled their plant locations in border cities like El Paso, with Mexican-American women filling nearly all jobs.

Mexican-American women were also among the millions who took jobs in teh defense plants which opened to supply the war. Wartime employment offered many women their first opportunity to work away from the watchful eyes of family members, to earn decent wages, to socialize with women outside their immediate communities, and to wear pants. Doing work that was formerly done only by men, these women workers came to have a new sense of self-esteem, and pride in their accomplishments. 

(Text is taken directly from pamphlet, for educational purposes.)

Flahback Friday 11 09 09 Family Trio

This is one of the photographs The Sartorialist has on his blog. There is a wonderful collection of vintage photos in addition to current ones of 'well dressed' people. I was glad to see the explanation of this one, because my first thought was that they were Nazis, certainly not hunters going out with pistols. But the truth is better.

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The information from the woman who posted this photo reads:

"My Grandfather was a freedom fighter in Denmark during the second World War. This picture makes me feel very proud of him!" Mette Lind Jørgensen

What brave men they were!

Memorial Day Memory

My father's Army unit in WWII. Not sure whether they had arrived in Europe or were still in the US. My father is top row center, the tallest man in the unit. Ahead of them was the Battle of the Bulge and a freezing cold winter. My father came home but was not the man who went to war at 23.

Which veteran is???

Flashback Friday 10 12 10

Taking us back to 1945 and WWII. My second Christmas and my present from my father in Germany - a bear larger than I was. I loved that bear but as the years went on it took up a lot of space and went the way of all discarded toys. Sad, isn't it.

I can now also associate that Christmas as one year after the brutal 44-45 winter my father spent during the "mop-up" of the war as he called it.  The Battle of the Bulge.

Wordless Wednesday

On My Desk...July 23

On my desk was actually last night as I wasn't sure what the a.m. was going to bring, other than a dark overcast day. Not much difference in light.



Paperwork. I needed to get some old divorce documents to fax to the government now that my ex-h has retired and pensions are in place. In many ways it's so much easier now with fax and voicemail. I look at the one letter I received back in 1992 and it actually was written with a typewriter.


But now all that paperwork can be put away and I will have a CLEAN desk to work on those ATC cards. They are certainly a challenge to me with that small size but I have an idea that amuses me (at least) and if I can get it from my head to paper, I will be quite pleased with myself. Now I just want to get the computer table cleared off, the rest of the scanning for Dick done and I'll feel quite happy.

So to see more desks, go to the On My Desk button on the right of this page and click away to see some more Wednesday players. Have fun!