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Pages have been made for everyone in our large extended family for their personal history.
These will be for you to post your most memorable pictures and written history. Write
them down as you remember them, send them to me, and I will compose a structure for
you that can include pictures and links to videos.
These are the things you want to share with generations to come.
Parents, please make a request if you want your child to have their own page to post
pictures, videos, or history.
Spouses, please link to genealogies of your own family history or include what you
can on your pages. I can create more pages for you if this will be the only record of your family's
history.
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Determining a structure for a digitized genealogy isn't easy. You have to have
a starting place, which works best from the past - listing downward
as children are begotten through the generations. Going "down" a list doesn't work if the
names under it are the parents, uncles, and grandparents of the person at the top.
I chose to put Mom and Dad at the pivotal center - the "zero point" of this generational
structure. The generations that come from them will have minus
markers to each, while the generations before them will have plus
markers- growing older with each.
I began to construct our current genealogy, and saw the struggling we kids have gone through
in our lives. You just cannot read between the lines to understand the whole story.
And so, it seems to me that it is appropriate to have Mom & Dad as the
centerpiece of this project. They represent the generation that has seen the huge
changes in civilization and society -- truly a pivotal generation -- the generation that
knew what life was like without an automobile -- the generation that grew up in a
social structure that -- a well-mannered person
was never really allowed to question.
Their generation had seen some hard financial times - and knew too well the life of
hard work where there was little time for leisure. Their lives were filled with duties
from dawn to dusk - duties that might have well meant- their very survival.
With the creation of a large "middle class" after World War II and the "baby boom"
that followed, that struggling world opened up to a freedom hardly conceived by our
ancestors. The suburbs began growing - green lawns were watered and mowed -
barbeque grills were smoking - and the world was changing.
Advances were made that eliminated much of the hard duties of times gone by -
permanent press fabrics, automatic clothes washers & dryers, disposable diapers,
kitchen appliances galore, well-stocked grocery stores, ice-cold air-conditioners,
central heat, dependable and beautiful cars, well-paved streets in well lit communities.
My parents' generation - were the parents of that next generation - who began living
that dream - that dream of all those past generations. We had been freed.
Truly hard labor and deprivation were not any part of our upbringing.
A great majority of our generation grew up with:
soda pop, potato chips, hot dogs and baseball games -
heated swimming pools and amusement parks -
vacations to interesting and beautiful places -
shampoos, hair "do's" and trendy fashions -
teen magazines full of Hollywood stars -
kids our age playing guitars on our transister radios ---
a generation who grew up and cruised in their fast, rumbling cars -
who went to parties and on dates... and sometimes "made out" -
and who surely wanted to "go steady" with someone special.
Our generation also had -- televisions "in living color" with a menu full of
comedies, movies, science fiction, and cartoons - as well as healthy doses of
documentaries, science, history, and most importantly- nightly news of the world.
Our generation became the most educated generation to ever walk the face of the
earth - and we had the "leisure time" with which to do it. But the social structure
around us did not reflect what we had been taught in our wonderful schools -
about good manners and the unquestioned moral authority of our institutions.
Bigotry, racism, snobbery, injustice, government buddy-ism, corporate colonialism,
and war after war taking shape - with our oh-so-properly-raised friends and family
being sent into the hell of a mis-managed military action in the jungles of distant
countries. We had practiced our atom-bomb drills - and then we had
witnessed the assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
And... we saw the resolute determination of people who had - for too too long - been
deprived of their own human dignity.
Like a "Perfect Storm" of events - the educated and idealistic young baby-boomers
found ourselves in the middle of - not a generational battle - so much as it was
a conflict with traditional authoritarian structures and grand corporate-government
in-workings - who liked their power.
We were pulled at on all sides... and undermined from all directions. We had been
manipulated... left without leaders... and now had to find our own way
through the maze. Our parents could hardly understand our dilemma. There was no
handbook for this new cultural freedom... in a shrinking world now becoming based on
science, fact, and logic... where "obedience" was the language of slavery.
The "baby-boomers" were a generation of kids trying to "find themselves" in a world
that was being re-defined by revelations of its own truths. And... what... WAS... true?
We were trying to find... what was TRUE. And... where technology had advanced so
far that men had walked on the moon... it had become a dangerous and intimidating
world - that was hidden from sight by the folly all around us.
If you did not live through this - you can't possibly understand it.
And so, as you peruse through this genealogy, do it with some mercy.
Our lives reflect this questioning - and this confusion... if it really is... confusion.
I'm believing that - all it has really been - is - the painful process of change.
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