Why Me?

 

This darling photo is not me but surely could be. I think I was born with gills behind my ears because I do love to be around water, especially the ocean. 

Why am I spotlighting me today? Because I'm really on a crusade to get all of us over-60 folks to write down your memories. One way to think about this is to image what do you want your great- great grandchildren to know about you??? 

I've kept notebooks and a simple journal for 40 years. With one spiral notebook, when my kids were teenagers, I wrote exactly what we did, went and ate every single day that year. Now maybe that drivel won't pique their beaks but my memories of Big Events surely will.

I tell them WHY I say I was born the Year of the Black Penny. I say WHY I lived in Japan as a five year old. I relate being the wife of a Navy nuclear submariner for eight years. I can tell them my memories of that 1963 day when Kennedy was shot. I can tell them I was with my mother-in-law watching the first men walk on the moon in 1969. I can tell them how my three teens plus one lived in an ash-surrounded cocoon in 1980 during Mt.St.Helens. I certainly will tell them how my sister-in-law called from Kansas City at 5:00am on that fateful 9-11 day (before we were up) to scream "turn on the TV, we're at war!" 

See how simple writing YOUR stories, YOUR memories can be? Hope I've tweaked your beak a bit. Tomorrow I turn 83; how old will you be tomorrow? Isn't it time you sharing your life's memories???

Mother Joseph

Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart, born Esther Pariseau in 1823 in Quebec, entered the convent of the newly founded Sisters of Charity in Montreal at age twenty. In 1856, she led a group of members from her congregation to the Pacific Northwest to establish schools and healthcare to the settlers flocking to that new and remote part of the country. During the 46 years from the time she arrived in Vancouver, Washington, until she passed away in 1901 she had been instrumental in establishing 29 health care institutions, schools and orphanages in the Pacific Northwest. Though most of the original structures no longer exist, most of the institutions which she founded are still in existence, continuing the work that she envisioned more than a century ago. 

Her influence and her presence was noted in 16 places in Washington, four places in Montana, two places in Oregon, one place in Idaho and two buildings in British Columbia. She was known as a stickler for detail. For example, during the construction of Scared Heart Hospital in Spokane, Mother Joseph, then 63 years old, lived with another sister "in a rough shack next to the construction site so she could oversee the work," even climbing ladders to inspect rafters and bouncing on planks to test their support. 

She was known for successfully raising $2000 to $5000 when she went fund-raising to the mining camps whereas in the ordinary small town she could collect perhaps $18 to $20. She surely was a mover and a shaker. 

Did you know there is a statue of Mother Joseph in the Washington, D.C. capitol?

 

Where In The World Is Danville?

Have you ever been to Danville? There are 24 places in America with the name of Danville, but our Danville is in Ferry County, Washington, just a few miles south of the border with Canada. 

Originally named Nelson from merchants Peter and his uncle Ole Nelson. An early reference to this settlement is dated 1896. The town was renamed in 1899 to prevent confusion with Nelson, British Columbia just across the border.  By 1897 the town boasted a jewelry and watch repair section of a general store, a post office, a newspaper (lasted only a year) and a sawmill. By 1913, the mill which produced 50,000 feet of lumber daily, was one of the three larger producers in the area.

The 1920s brought increasing prosperity to Danville when it became a rendezvous for whiskey smugglers, who employed local guides familiar with the old trails to avoid detection by border authorities as they smuggled booze from Canada down into the "dry" U.S. 

The top image is of the U.S.-Canada border crossing station. The lower photo is the Nelson's general store in the 1890s.  

From the website MyNorthwest:  Danville is in the part of Washington that was once the Colville Indian Reservation. However, when valuable minerals were discovered there, the land was taken away from Indigenous people by the federal government and opened to settlement and mineral claims by white homesteaders and miners. This little-remembered episode surely ranks as one of the great injustices in the state’s history.

Now isn't that a sad factoid?

What Is A Keeper?

 

Sue Kreikemeier is president of the Whitman County Genealogical Society. Her editorial in their November 2025 newsletter was a real zinger and I asked permission from her to share it with you.

"Dear Readers, I am sure many of you can related to the quandary I find myself facing on a continual basis... how to manage my plethora of notes, hard copy records, unlabeled family photos and other ephemera from my genealogical pursuits. How do I know what to keep and what to toss out? Might something seeming irrelevant become an important clue in the future? 

"Asking myself what is a "keeper," I went to Google and found many definitions. My favorites were (1)a person whose job it is to guard to take care of something or (2) a curator. This gave me a new way of looking at those challenging piles and files. Instead of thinking about which items I should keep, I started thinking about how I might better define and deliver on my role of "keeper" especially as it relates to family history."

Sue went on in this editorial to tell about how she and her siblings were collaborating on putting down their memories of a very frightening event that occurred in the family when Sue was about nine years old. Sue says she has realized that "sometimes being a "keeper" means sharing something that can't be found in any document or archive."

Isn't that just another way to say WRITE YOUR STORIES NOW! I think Sue would second that motion. 

Ossuaries?

Do you know what an ossuary is? What it was used for....and when? Well, let's learn!

 

An ossuary was usually a smallish chest or box used to hold the bones or cremains of the dead. As far back as 40 B.C. ossuaries were popular among the Jewish population.  Historically they have been used in areas where burial space was scarce or in situations were large numbers of people died in a short time such as a plague or battle. Also, over time, they were used when the bones were exhumed from a grave to make space for a new burial. (Very common in Europe even today. You have your cemetery space or plot for x-number of years and then the plot is reused.)

Are ossuaries used today? Certainly yes. How many have their deceased loved ones still with them sitting on the mantel?? There are funeral urns even for our beloved pets!

Francis Harold Potter

 

Ever been out on Fairchild Air Force Base and driven past the real-life B-52 parked on display there? My father, Francis Harold Potter, was the AC (Aircraft Commander) of that very plane! My son took the serial number of that plane and did the research to prove that fact. 

Dad would have been 105 years old today. He's been gone for 22 years. And I realize every day that I should have given him more of my time. 

I'm so glad I talked to him over the years gleaning his stories..... from a poor, rural Illinois childhood, to a brilliant career in the Air Force (he flew in the Berlin Airlift and Operation Chromedome), to a great grandpa to children. He did his last waterskiing at age 80. He and Mom traveled the world. He could change rocks into candy for big-eyed grandchildren. He was a great guy.

Asking my grandmother how she named him, she explained that she liked "Frank" but that sounded too grownup for a baby so they settled on Francis. As for Harold? She giggled and lowered her voice to tell me "It was after an old boyfriend...but I never told Mel!" 

The point of this post today is to beg you to procrastinate no longer! Talk to your elders and learn their stories!  And get your own stories down either on paper or computer. Please just do it.

Flashbulb Memories

 

Flashbulb memories are moments seared into our minds. Think of any momentous moment in your life (birth, death) and likely immediately a vivid memory will flash into your mind.

Think Mt.St.Helens that day in May 1980. Think seeing men walking on the moon in 1969. Think your first hearing or seeing the awful events of 9-11. Think of that November day in 1963 when you watched the footage over and over of Pres. Kennedy being shot. 

Not to mention some terrifying or fantastically happy family moment. Think when you learned of the death of a loved one. 

Flashbulb memories are said to be the surprise and indiscriminate illumination that "flash" into your mind when something..... sight, sound, image, smell..... triggers that flashbulb memory.

My daughter was aboard when a Delta airliner crashed upon take off. It took years of work for her to overcome "airplane smell" and fly away on vacations again. My son's face when he learned that he didn't quite make it home in time to see his father one last time. The time I was barefoot on the lake dock ready to jump into the boat when the boat sloshed up and my big toenail was torn loose. 

Don't we all have these flashbulb memories? So what to do with them? What might we should do with them? If we consider them as autobiographical memories then shouldn't we be writing them down?? Aren't they part of our personal history? 

Do you suppose your ancestors had flashbulb-memory-events? What would you give today for a one-page scribbled memory from them of that event? 

Today, YOU are the ancestor. Please, for the sake of your posterity, write down your memories! They will bless you forever for doing so.