Lew Galloway (1883-1962) was my great grandfather, my father’s grandfather. I never met him; he died a decade before I was born. Growing up in a small town in western Kansas, I knew the old-timers who knew Lew. They spoke of him in a way that made him seem larger than life. I have his […]
Your memories may be in danger. Here’s why: memories are the strongest links to your ancestors, but they disappear if you don’t preserve them. And old family photos are like little time machines; they transport you to a place called memory. Recently, I experienced this time-travel firsthand when I went to visit my 101-year-old grandmother. I took […]
You’ve been staring at the box for months. It’s starting to make you feel a bit guilty. You scoot it under your bed so it won’t stare at you every day. Then your mother calls and asks you about it. “Have you had a chance to start scanning those family photos? The family reunion is coming […]
This photo was taken at Fort Hood, Texas in 1958. It’s my Dad with his childhood friend, Bubba. Their birthdays were close to one another, so my grandmother and Bubba’s mother decided to have a joint birthday party. Grandma told me they needed special permission to have the party. Race was never an issue when […]
Her five grandchildren call her “Bajka,” which in Serbian means fairytale. My grandmother was born in Belgrade in 1943. As a young woman, she studied art history and later began working on national television as a producer and director of a series that explored Serbian history through music. During the war in Serbia, after her […]
Meet my grandfather Oscar’s rowing team; these young men won the rower’s cup in 1924, Manor House, Tonbridge School, Kent. We called my grandfather ‘Tatita Oscar.’ He went on to join Grace & Co., thus ending up in Bolivia and Chile, where destiny would bring his son Martin, my father, to meet my mother Paula. […]
Mom and her Mom, Vietnam, early 1950s. We left Vietnam in early 1975, when I was just 14 months old, and my grandparents stayed behind. I didn’t see them again until they emigrated to the United States in 1984, when I was 10 years old. My ba ngoai (maternal grandmother) was by that point in […]
As I continue to sort family photos, I find surprises tucked away in the oddest corners…like this one. I love this snapshot of my mother and my grandmother on the beach, probably on the Chilean coast, where we are originally from. My mother and my grandmother were fashionistas, my mother in the New York cosmopolitan […]
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 […]
My 101-year old grandmother, known to all as “Bubbie,” is truly a force of nature. For as long as I can remember, my grandmother has always looked like she stepped out of the pages of a magazine. Although her perfect beehive hairdo has been her defining physical characteristic, when I think of my Bubbie I […]
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