Hi John and everyone: I have been remiss in writing very much to the list lately. Too busy with Santa Claus, etc. But here is another "secretive" tale: I grew up with my grandparents - my grandmother was a very jolly open person who was always homesick for the Heimat (Vilsen, Grafschaft Hoya to be exact) and told me innumerable wonderful stories (many of which were the basis for my Saxon Chronicle books.) My grandfather, au contraire, was very secretive, almost bitter. She often told me that he had a very unhappy childhood, which I learned a lot more about when I was researching over there. (But that's another long story) So his bitterness was very understandable. However, they were in this country over 60 years so one would think he would have let some of it go. She saved everything - pictures, letters, precious old documents, etc. Unfortunately she died first and after her death he became what was then called senile (probably Alzheimers - but we didn't know about that then) and burned everything - everything!!! I was just a teenager then - so could do nothing. Heartbreaking. Jane
JANE E SWAN
jeswansong@earthlink.net
EarthLink Revolves Around You.
Expected you'd want to get in on this and have an interesting take to contribute. It's just hard to believe what motivates some people to destroy those kinds of things. Yours is but another variant on this theme now. And how big is this little H-L Kuhdorf of ours anyway? So multiply that by all the folks out there in the wild blue yonder and you can see these kinds of occurrences are not completely remote or unheard of. And then like Maureen added, there's the "clearing out" impulse amongst some, where purging such materials because of the difficulty many find being surrounded by so many reminders of the past becomes the solution. Wild.
What I'd give to have back all those precious "reminders of the past." Aye yea yea. <head whirls>
As for your grandfather's bitter nature (gee, who does that remind me of recently?), I have long come to understand why it is some folks have little to no interest in family history. It isn't necessarily a lack of priorities, or a lack of heart or feelings. It often finds its roots in unhappy or difficult upbringings, of which anyone so misfortuned can hardly be faulted. One lousy parent, maybe a drunken father or too strict mother, maybe a bitter divorce, maybe dire poverty, maybe some traumatic incident with a member of the family - on and on the possibilities go. On the other hand, the lack of knowledge of things family-related creates a driving force in some souls to get to the bottom of things. How often do we find that when a youngin' asks a basic question about the family background, the only answer they receive is "I don't know" or "Why are you interested?" That alone can spur some folks on.
Too bad she went first Jane. I can only say "I can relate".
Fr�hliche Weihnachten auch. Jb
PS. To those who have written me off-list over the last few days over various things, I'm still in catch-up mode but I will be getting to you. You know who you are, and I haven't forgotten any of you.