The gift of memory and storytelling is something that should always be held dear, and recently I’ve really begun to treasure these stories that my grandparents tell – even if I’ve heard them a hundred times – to have them told by Eugene and Alice themselves is pretty great.

My family will always remember Grandpa’s stories from his travels on the cattle boats. He’ll get out his slides and the old projector and recount his days as a teenage “cowboy,” traveling to places like Greece and Poland. One trip in particular, his favorite to tell, is of when he was almost left behind in China after venturing off to see the Great Wall. That one usually ends with him joking about the what if’s…maybe he’d still be stuck in China if they weren’t so lucky!

I collaborated with my Grandpa to tell this story in book-form, and this is an excerpt printed next to the photo of him tending to the cattle on the ship. “69 years ago when I was an 18-year-old lad, I learned that the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitations Administration was taking cattle – horses, mules and cows to Europe and China after the end of World War II. I learned they needed cattlemen, or cowboys as we were called, to care for these animals aboard the ships.” ~shared by @kschmid_