Friends, memories
Thinking about shifting gears in my quest for Grandpa's picture. I was looking at the 1940 census again and looking for neighbors with kids roughly the same age as Grandpa. Grandpa was still attending school at the time the census was taken, and I figure any neighbor kids probably would have been his classmates. Maybe if I try searching for them in yearbooks, I might find Grandpa somehow. I don't know. I wish I could find someone, anyone, who knew him back then.
I also wish that I had had longer to really get to know my Grandpa. I was only 13 when he died. When you're 13 years old and your Grandma insists that Grandpa hates talking about his past, you don't push it. He (understandably) never, ever talked about fighting in WWII, but I bet he would have talked about his childhood - by all accounts, his life with his foster parents was a good one.
Grandpa's past was one reason he always seemed so willing to indulge his grandkids - he was just happy to have a family around and to treat us kids like, well, kids! My sister remembers Grandpa letting her put her barrettes in his hair when she was little. I remember him always letting us have whatever snacks we wanted when we went over to visit, and was always happy to get the old wooden badminton rackets down from the garage for my cousins and me to play with in the backyard. He kept a massive garden and it was always immaculately tended; there was never any shortage of corn, tomatoes and peppers for our family to take home.
It is still one of my 2015 genealogy goals to track down a picture of Grandpa as a kid. Probably the hardest genealogy search I've ever done but I don't want to give up quite yet.
I also wish that I had had longer to really get to know my Grandpa. I was only 13 when he died. When you're 13 years old and your Grandma insists that Grandpa hates talking about his past, you don't push it. He (understandably) never, ever talked about fighting in WWII, but I bet he would have talked about his childhood - by all accounts, his life with his foster parents was a good one.
Grandpa's past was one reason he always seemed so willing to indulge his grandkids - he was just happy to have a family around and to treat us kids like, well, kids! My sister remembers Grandpa letting her put her barrettes in his hair when she was little. I remember him always letting us have whatever snacks we wanted when we went over to visit, and was always happy to get the old wooden badminton rackets down from the garage for my cousins and me to play with in the backyard. He kept a massive garden and it was always immaculately tended; there was never any shortage of corn, tomatoes and peppers for our family to take home.
It is still one of my 2015 genealogy goals to track down a picture of Grandpa as a kid. Probably the hardest genealogy search I've ever done but I don't want to give up quite yet.
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