About Me

My photo
Lake Mathews (Perris), CA, United States
Born in Illinois, I grew up in Wilmette, a northern suburb of Chicago. I have one sibling, an older brother. I am married, for the 2nd time now, to Butch & got 4 children in the deal. They have gone on to make me grandmother 25 times over & great-grandmother to over 20!. After many years working in industry, I got my bachelors and masters degrees in speech communication, & was a professor in that field for 13 years. I retired in 2001 & returned to school & got my doctorate in folklore. Now I meld my two interests - folklore & genealogy - & add my teaching background, resulting in my current profession: speaker/author/entertainer of genealogically-related topics. I play many folk instruments, but my preference is guitar, which I have been playing since 1963. I write the "Aunty Jeff" column for the Informer, newsletter of the Jefferson County NY Gen. Soc. I work in partnership with Gena Philibert-Ortega & Sara Cochran as Genealogy Journeys® where we focus on educating folks about Social History. More about that: genaandjean.blogspot.com. More on our podcasts: genjourneys.podbean.com. More about my own projects: Circlemending.org.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Treasure Chest Thursday - Grandfather's Rocker

When my grandfather, Lee Alfred Wilcox, died in 1968, the same night that Dr. Martin Luther King was shot, we (my parents & I) were left to clean out his house. One of the items I (still in high school) insisted we keep was his rocking chair. For hours, as a small child, I would sit on the arm of that chair, half in "Deeda's" lap, rocking & listening to the stories of his childhood and my family legacy (much of which fueled my interest in genealogy). I wanted that chair! Though there was no convenient place to keep it in my family's home, my parents relented and squeezed it in until I moved out to my own apartment. That chair has moved across country, up & down the coast of California, and still sits in my home today. Every time I sit in it and run my hands along the arms, I am taken back to those days in Wilmette, Cook, Illinois, when I learned about my lineage.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please keep comments related to this post or topic; others will be deleted. Contact blog author directly for other issues.